[138] Report of a Consultation of Officers on board his Majesty’s ship “Superbe,” enclosed in a letter of Warren to Pepperrell, 24 May, 1745.

[139] Pepperrell to Warren, 28 May, 1745.

[140] Warren to Pepperrell, 29 May, 1745.

[141] Duchambon au Ministre, 2 Septembre, 1745.

[142] Warren to Pepperrell, 11 June, 1745. Pepperrell to Warren, 13 June, 1745.

[143] Bigot au Ministre, 1 Août, 1745.

[144] Duchambon au Ministre, 2 Septembre, 1745.

[145] Duchambon à Pepperrell et Warren, 26 Juin (new style), 1745.

[146] Warren and Pepperrell to Duchambon, 15 June, 1745.

[147] Duchambon à Warren et Pepperrell, 27 Juin (new style), 1745.

[148] Pepperrell to Warren, 16 June, 1745. Warren to Pepperrell, 16 June, 1745.

[149] Pepperrell to Shirley, 18 June (old style), 1745. Ibid., 4 July, 1745.

[150] Habitant de Louisbourg.

[151] Pepperrell more than once complains of a total want of both powder and balls. Warren writes to him on May 29: “It is very lucky that we could spare you some powder; I am told you had not a grain left.”

[152] “C’est par une protection visible de la Providence que nous avons prévenu une journée qui nous auroit été si funeste.”—Lettre d’un Habitant de Louisbourg.

[153] Warren to Pepperrell, 10 June, 1745.

[154] Collections of Mass, Hist. Society, i. 49.

[155] A descendant of Moody, at the village of York, told me that he was found in the church busy in the work of demolition.

[156] “Thursday, ye 21st. Ye French keep possession yet, and we are forsed to stand at their Dores to gard them.”—Diary of a Soldier, anonymous.

[157] Lettre d’un Habitant de Louisbourg.

[158] Report of Consultation on board the “Superbe,” 7 June, 1745. “Commodore Warren did say publickly that before the Circular Battery was reduced he would not venture in here with three times ye sea force he had with him, and, through divine assistance, we tore that [battery] and this city almost to pieces.”—Pepperrell to Shirley, 4 July, 1745.

[159] Warren had no men to spare. He says: “If it should be thought necessary to join your troops with any men from our ships, it should only be done for some sudden attack that may be executed in one day or night.”—Warren to Pepperrell, 11 May, 1745. No such occasion arose.

[160] Ibid., 13 May, 1745. On the nineteenth of May, 1746, Warren made a parting speech to the New England men at Louisbourg, in which he tells them that it was they who conquered the country, and expresses the hope that should the French try to recover it, “the same Spirit that induced you to make this Conquest will prompt you to protect it.” See the speech in Beamish-Murdoch, ii. 100-102.

[161] See extracts in Parsons, 105, 106. The Habitant de Louisbourg extols Warren, but is not partial to Pepperrell, whom he calls, incorrectly, “the son of a Boston shoemaker.”

[162] To Rous, captain of a provincial cruiser, whom Warren had commended for conduct and courage, was given the command of a ship in the royal navy.

“Tell your Council and Assembly, in his Majesty’s name,” writes Newcastle to Shirley, “that their conduct will always entitle them, in a particular manner, to his royal favor and protection.”—Newcastle to Shirley, 10 August, 1745.

[163] £183,649 to Massachusetts; £16,355 to New Hampshire; £28,863 to Connecticut; £6,332 to Rhode Island.

[164] Palfrey, New England, v. 101-109; Shirley, Report to the Board of Trade. Bollan to Secretary Willard, in Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 53; Hutchinson, Hist. Mass., ii. 391-395. Letters of Bollan in Massachusetts Archives.

It was through the exertions of the much-abused Thomas Hutchinson, Speaker of the Assembly and historian of Massachusetts, that the money was used for the laudable purpose of extinguishing the old debt.

Shirley did his utmost to support Bollan in his efforts to obtain compensation, and after highly praising the zeal and loyalty of the people of his province, he writes to Newcastle: “Justice, as well as the affection which I bear to ’em, constrains me to beseech your Grace to recommend their Case to his Majesty’s paternal Care & Tenderness in the Strongest manner.”—Shirley to Newcastle, 6 November, 1745.

For French views of the siege of Louisbourg, see Appendix B.

The troops and inhabitants of Louisbourg were all embarked for France, and the town was at last in full possession of the victors. The serious-minded among them—and there were few who did not bear the stamp of hereditary Puritanism—now saw a fresh proof that they were the peculiar care of an approving Providence. While they were in camp the weather had been favorable; but they were scarcely housed when a cold, persistent rain poured down in floods that would have drenched their flimsy tents and turned their huts of turf into mud-heaps, robbing the sick of every hope of recovery. Even now they got little comfort from the shattered tenements of Louisbourg. The siege had left the town in so filthy a condition that the wells were infected and the water was poisoned.

The soldiers clamored for discharge, having enlisted to serve only till the end of the expedition; and Shirley insisted that faith must be kept with them, or no more would enlist.[165] Pepperrell, much to the dissatisfaction of Warren, sent home about seven hundred men, some of whom were on the sick list, while the rest had families in distress and danger on the exposed frontier. At the same time he begged hard for reinforcements, expecting a visit from the French and a desperate attempt to recover Louisbourg. He and Warren governed the place jointly, under martial law, and they both passed half their time in holding courts-martial; for disorder reigned among the disgusted militia, and no less among the crowd of hungry speculators, who flocked like vultures to the conquered town to buy the cargoes of captured ships, or seek for other prey. The Massachusetts soldiers, whose pay was the smallest, and who had counted on being at their homes by the end of July, were the most turbulent; but all alike were on the brink of mutiny. Excited by their ringleaders, they one day marched in a body to the parade and threw down their arms, but probably soon picked them up again, as in most cases the guns were hunting-pieces belonging to those who carried them. Pepperrell begged Shirley to come to Louisbourg and bring the mutineers back to duty. Accordingly, on the sixteenth of August he arrived in a ship-of-war, accompanied by Mrs. Shirley and Mrs. Warren, wife of the commodore. The soldiers duly fell into line to receive him. As it was not his habit to hide his own merits, he tells the Duke of Newcastle that nobody but he could have quieted the malcontents,—which is probably true, as nobody else had power to raise their pay. He made them a speech, promised them forty shillings in Massachusetts new-tenor currency a month, instead of twenty-five, and ended with ordering for each man half a pint of rum to drink the King’s health. Though potations so generous might be thought to promise effects not wholly sedative, the mutineers were brought to reason, and some even consented to remain in garrison till the next June.[166]

Small reinforcements came from New England to hold the place till the arrival of troops from Gibraltar, promised by the ministry. The two regiments raised in the colonies, and commanded by Shirley and Pepperrell, were also intended to form a part of the garrison; but difficulty was found in filling the ranks, because, says Shirley, some commissions have been given to Englishmen, and men will not enlist, here except under American officers.

Nothing could be more dismal than the condition of Louisbourg, as reflected in the diaries of soldiers and others who spent there the winter that followed its capture. Among these diaries is that of the worthy Benjamin Crafts, private in Hale’s Essex regiment, who to the entry of each day adds a pious invocation, sincere in its way, no doubt, though hackneyed, and sometimes in strange company. Thus, after noting down Shirley’s gift of half a pint of rum to every man to drink the King’s health, he adds immediately: “The Lord Look upon us and enable us to trust in him & may he prepare us for his holy Day.” On “September ye 1, being Sabath,” we find the following record: “I am much out of order. This forenoon heard Mr. Stephen Williams preach from ye 18 Luke 9 verse in the afternoon from ye 8 of Ecles: 8 verse: Blessed be the Lord that has given us to enjoy another Sabath and opertunity to hear his Word Dispensed.” On the next day, “being Monday,” he continues, “Last night I was taken very Bad: the Lord be pleased to strengthen my inner man that I may put my whole Trust in him. May we all be prepared for his holy will. Rcd part of plunder, 9 small tooth combs.” Crafts died in the spring, of the prevailing distemper, after doing good service in the commissary department of his regiment.

Stephen Williams, the preacher whose sermons had comforted Crafts in his trouble, was a son of Rev. John Williams, captured by the Indians at Deerfield in 1704, and was now minister of Long Meadow, Massachusetts. He had joined the anti-papal crusade as one of its chaplains, and passed for a man of ability,—a point on which those who read his diary will probably have doubts. The lot of the army chaplains was of the hardest. A pestilence had fallen upon Louisbourg, and turned the fortress into a hospital. “After we got into the town,” says the sarcastic Dr. Douglas, whose pleasure it is to put everything in its worst light, “a sordid indolence or sloth, for want of discipline, induced putrid fevers and dysenteries, which at length in August became contagious, and the people died like rotten sheep.” From fourteen to twenty-seven were buried every day in the cemetery behind the town, outside the Maurepas Gate, by the old lime-kiln on Rochefort Point; and the forgotten bones of above five hundred New England men lie there to this day under the coarse, neglected grass. The chaplain’s diary is little but a dismal record of sickness, death, sermons, funerals, and prayers with the dying ten times a day. “Prayed at Hospital;—Prayed at Citadel;—Preached at Grand Batery;—Visited Capt. [illegible], very sick;—One of Capt.——’s company dyd.—Am but poorly myself, but able to keep about.” Now and then there is a momentary change of note, as when he writes: “July 29th. One of ye Captains of ye men of war caind a soldier who struck ye capt. again. A great tumult. Swords were drawn; no life lost, but great uneasiness is caused.” Or when he sets down the “say” of some Briton, apparently a naval officer, “that he had tho’t ye New England men were Cowards—but now he tho’t yt if they had a pick axe & spade, they w’d dig ye way to Hell & storm it.”[167]

Williams was sorely smitten with homesickness, but he sturdily kept his post, in spite of grievous yearnings for family and flock. The pestilence slowly abated, till at length the burying-parties that passed the Maurepas Gate counted only three or four a day. At the end of January five hundred and sixty-one men had died, eleven hundred were on the sick list, and about one thousand fit for duty.[168] The promised regiments from Gibraltar had not come. Could the French have struck then, Louisbourg might have changed hands again. The Gibraltar regiments had arrived so late upon that rude coast that they turned southward to the milder shores of Virginia, spent the winter there, and did not appear at Louisbourg till April. They brought with them a commission for Warren as governor of the fortress. He made a speech of thanks to the New England garrison, now reduced to less than nineteen hundred men, sick and well, and they sailed at last for home, Louisbourg being now thought safe from any attempt of France.

To the zealous and energetic Shirley the capture of the fortress was but a beginning of greater triumphs. Scarcely had the New England militia sailed from Boston on their desperate venture, when he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle that should the expedition succeed, all New England would be on fire to attack Canada, and the other colonies would take part with them, if ordered to do so by the ministry.[169] And, some months later, after Louisbourg was taken, he urged the policy of striking while the iron was hot, and invading Canada at once. The colonists, he said, were ready, and it would be easier to raise ten thousand men for such an attack than one thousand to lie idle in garrison at Louisbourg or anywhere else. France and England, he thinks, cannot live on the same continent. If we were rid of the French, he continues, England would soon control America, which would make her first among the nations; and he ventures what now seems the modest prediction that in one or two centuries the British colonies would rival France in population. Even now, he is sure that they would raise twenty thousand men to capture Canada, if the King required it of them, and Warren would be an acceptable commander for the naval part of the expedition; “but,” concludes the governor, “I will take no step without orders from his Majesty.”[170]

The Duke of Newcastle was now at the head of the Government. Smollett and Horace Walpole have made his absurdities familiar, in anecdotes which, true or not, do no injustice to his character; yet he had talents that were great in their way, though their way was a mean one. They were talents, not of the statesman, but of the political manager, and their object was to win office and keep it.

Newcastle, whatever his motives, listened to the counsels of Shirley, and directed him to consult with Warren as to the proposed attack on Canada. At the same time he sent a circular letter to the governors of the provinces from New England to North Carolina, directing them, should the invasion be ordered, to call upon their assemblies for as many men as they would grant.[171] Shirley’s views were cordially supported by Warren, and the levies were made accordingly, though not in proportion to the strength of the several colonies; for those south of New York felt little interest in the plan. Shirley was told to “dispose Massachusetts to do its part;” but neither he nor his province needed prompting. Taking his cue from the Roman senator, he exclaimed to his Assembly, “Delenda est Canada;” and the Assembly responded by voting to raise thirty-five hundred men, and offering a bounty equivalent to £4 sterling to each volunteer, besides a blanket for every one, and a bed for every two. New Hampshire contributed five hundred men, Rhode Island three hundred, Connecticut one thousand, New York sixteen hundred, New Jersey five hundred, Maryland three hundred, and Virginia one hundred. The Pennsylvania Assembly, controlled by Quaker noncombatants, would give no soldiers; but, by a popular movement, the province furnished four hundred men, without the help of its representatives.[172]

As usual in the English attempts against Canada, the campaign was to be a double one. The main body of troops, composed of British regulars and New England militia, was to sail up the St. Lawrence and attack Quebec, while the levies of New York and the provinces farther south, aided, it was hoped, by the warriors of the Iroquois, were to advance on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain.

Newcastle promised eight battalions of British troops under Lieutenant-General Saint-Clair. They were to meet the New England men at Louisbourg, and all were then to sail together for Quebec, under the escort of a squadron commanded by Warren. Shirley also was to go to Louisbourg, and arrange the plan of the campaign with the general and the admiral. Thus, without loss of time, the captured fortress was to be made a base of operations against its late owners.

Canada was wild with alarm at reports of English preparation. There were about fifty English prisoners in barracks at Quebec, and every device was tried to get information from them; but being chiefly rustics caught on the frontiers by Indian war-parties, they had little news to give, and often refused to give even this. One of them, who had been taken long before and gained over by the French,[173] was used as an agent to extract information from his countrymen, and was called “notre homme de confiance.” At the same time the prisoners were freely supplied with writing materials, and their letters to their friends being then opened, it appeared that they were all in expectation of speedy deliverance.[174]

In July a report came from Acadia that from forty to fifty thousand men were to attack Canada; and on the first of August a prisoner lately taken at Saratoga declared that there were thirty-two war-ships at Boston ready to sail against Quebec, and that thirteen thousand men were to march at once from Albany against Montreal. “If all these stories are true,” writes the Canadian journalist, “all the English on this continent must be in arms.”

Preparations for defence were pushed with feverish energy. Fireships were made ready at Quebec, and fire-rafts at Isle-aux-Coudres; provisions were gathered, and ammunition was distributed; reconnoitring parties were sent to watch the gulf and the river; and bands of Canadians and Indians lately sent to Acadia were ordered to hasten back.

Thanks to the Duke of Newcastle, all these alarms were needless. The Massachusetts levies were ready within six weeks, and Shirley, eager and impatient, waited in vain for the squadron from England and the promised eight battalions of regulars. They did not come; and in August he wrote to Newcastle that it would now be impossible to reach Quebec before October, which would be too late.[175] The eight battalions had been sent to Portsmouth for embarkation, ordered on board the transports, then ordered ashore again, and finally sent on an abortive expedition against the coast of France. There were those who thought that this had been their destination from the first, and that the proposed attack on Canada was only a pretence to deceive the enemy. It was not till the next spring that Newcastle tried to explain the miscarriage to Shirley. He wrote that the troops had been detained by head-winds till General Saint-Clair and Admiral Lestock thought it too late; to which he added that the demands of the European war made the Canadian expedition impracticable, and that Shirley was to stand on the defensive and attempt no further conquests. As for the provincial soldiers, who this time were in the pay of the Crown, he says that they were “very expensive,” and orders the governor to get rid of them “as cheap as possible.”[176] Thus, not for the first time, the hopes of the colonies were brought to nought by the failure of the British ministers to keep their promises.

When, in the autumn of 1746, Shirley said that for the present Canada was to be let alone, he bethought him of a less decisive conquest, and proposed to employ the provincial troops for an attack on Crown Point, which formed a halfway station between Albany and Montreal, and was the constant rendezvous of war-parties against New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, whose discords and jealousies had prevented them from combining to attack it. The Dutch of Albany, too, had strong commercial reasons for not coming to blows with the Canadians. Of late, however, Massachusetts and New York had suffered so much from this inconvenient neighbor that it was possible to unite them against it; and as Clinton, governor of New York, was scarcely less earnest to get possession of Crown Point than was Shirley himself, a plan of operations was soon settled. By the middle of October fifteen hundred Massachusetts troops were on their way to join the New York levies, and then advance upon the obnoxious post.[177]

Even this modest enterprise was destined to fail. Astounding tidings reached New England, and startled her like a thunder-clap from dreams of conquest. It was reported that a great French fleet and army were on their way to retake Louisbourg, reconquer Acadia, burn Boston, and lay waste the other seaboard towns. The Massachusetts troops marching for Crown Point were recalled, and the country militia were mustered in arms. In a few days the narrow, crooked streets of the Puritan capital were crowded with more than eight thousand armed rustics from the farms and villages of Middlesex, Essex, Norfolk, and Worcester, and Connecticut promised six thousand more as soon as the hostile fleet should appear. The defences of Castle William were enlarged and strengthened, and cannon were planted on the islands at the mouth of the harbor; hulks were sunk in the channel, and a boom was laid across it under the guns of the castle.[178] The alarm was compared to that which filled England on the approach of the Spanish Armada.[179]

Canada heard the news of the coming armament with an exultation that was dashed with misgiving as weeks and months passed and the fleet did not appear. At length in September a vessel put in to an Acadian harbor with the report that she had met the ships in mid-ocean, and that they counted a hundred and fifty sail. Some weeks later the governor and intendant of Canada wrote that on the fourteenth of October they received a letter from Chibucto with “the agreeable news” that the Duc d’Anville and his fleet had arrived there about three weeks before. Had they known more, they would have rejoiced less.

That her great American fortress should have been snatched from her by a despised militia was more than France could bear; and in the midst of a burdensome war she made a crowning effort to retrieve her honor and pay the debt with usury. It was computed that nearly half the French navy was gathered at Brest under command of the Duc d’Anville. By one account his force consisted of eleven ships-of-the-line, twenty frigates, and thirty-four transports and fireships, or sixty-five in all. Another list gives a total of sixty-six, of which ten were ships-of-the-line, twenty-two were frigates and fireships, and thirty-four were transports.[180] These last carried the regiment of Ponthieu, with other veteran troops, to the number in all of three thousand one hundred and fifty. The fleet was to be joined at Chibucto, now Halifax, by four heavy ships-of-war lately sent to the West Indies under M. de Conflans.

From Brest D’Anville sailed for some reason to Rochelle, and here the ships were kept so long by head-winds that it was the twentieth of June before they could put to sea. From the first the omens were sinister. The admiral was beset with questions as to the destination of the fleet, which was known to him alone; and when, for the sake of peace, he told it to his officers, their discontent redoubled. The Bay of Biscay was rough and boisterous, and spars, sails, and bowsprits were carried away. After they had been a week at sea, some of the ships, being dull sailers, lagged behind, and the rest were forced to shorten sail and wait for them. In the longitude of the Azores there was a dead calm, and the whole fleet lay idle for days. Then came a squall, with lightning. Several ships were struck. On one of them six men were killed, and on the seventy-gun ship “Mars” a box of musket and cannon cartridges blew up, killed ten men, and wounded twenty-one. A store-ship which proved to be sinking was abandoned and burned. Then a pestilence broke out, and in some of the ships there were more sick than in health.

On the fourteenth of September they neared the coast of Nova Scotia, and were in dread of the dangerous shoals of Sable Island, the position of which they did not exactly know. They groped their way in fogs till a fearful storm, with thunder and lightning, fell upon them. The journalist of the voyage, a captain in the regiment of Ponthieu, says, with the exaggeration common in such cases, that the waves ran as high as the masts; and such was their violence that a transport, dashing against the ship “Amazone,” immediately went down, with all on board. The crew of the “Prince d’Orange,” half blinded by wind and spray, saw the great ship “Caribou,” without bowsprit or main-topmast, driving towards them before the gale, and held their breath in expectation of the shock as she swept close alongside and vanished in the storm.[181] The tempest raged all night, and the fleet became so scattered that there was no more danger of collision. In the morning the journalist could see but five sail; but as the day advanced the rest began to reappear, and at three o’clock he counted thirty-one from the deck of the “Prince d’Orange.” The gale was subsiding, but its effects were seen in hencoops, casks, and chests floating on the surges and telling the fate of one or more of the fleet. The “Argonaut” was rolling helpless, without masts or rudder; the “Caribou” had thrown overboard all the starboard guns of her upper deck; and the vice-admiral’s ship, the “Trident,” was in scarcely better condition.

On the twenty-third they were wrapped in thick fog and lay firing guns, ringing bells, and beating drums to prevent collisions. When the weather cleared, they looked in vain for the admiral’s ship, the “Northumberland.”[182] She was not lost, however, but with two other ships was far ahead of the fleet and near Chibucto, though in great perplexity, having no pilot who knew the coast. She soon after had the good fortune to capture a small English vessel with a man on board well acquainted with Chibucto harbor. D’Anville offered him his liberty and a hundred louis if he would pilot the ship in. To this he agreed; but when he rejoined his fellow-prisoners they called him a traitor to his country, on which he retracted his promise. D’Anville was sorely perplexed; but Duperrier, captain of the “Northumberland,” less considerate of the prisoner’s feelings, told him that unless he kept his word he should be thrown into the sea, with a pair of cannon-balls made fast to his feet. At this his scruples gave way, and before night the “Northumberland” was safe in Chibucto Bay. D’Anville had hoped to find here the four ships of Conflans, which were to have met him from the West Indies at this, the appointed rendezvous; but he saw only a solitary transport of his own fleet. Hills covered with forests stood lonely and savage round what is now the harbor of Halifax. Conflans and his four ships had arrived early in the month, and finding nobody, though it was nearly three months since D’Anville left Rochelle, he cruised among the fogs for a while, and then sailed for France a few days before the admiral’s arrival.

D’Anville was ignorant of the fate of his fleet; but he knew that the two ships which had reached Chibucto with him were full of sick men, that their provisions were nearly spent, and that there was every reason to believe such of the fleet as the storm might have spared to be in no better case. An officer of the expedition describes D’Anville as a man “made to command and worthy to be loved,” and says that he had borne the disasters of the voyage with the utmost fortitude and serenity.[183] Yet suspense and distress wrought fatally upon him, and at two o’clock in the morning of the twenty-seventh he died,—of apoplexy, by the best accounts; though it was whispered among the crews that he had ended his troubles by poison.[184]

At six o’clock in the afternoon of the same day D’Estournel, the vice-admiral, with such ships as remained with him, entered the harbor and learned what had happened. He saw with dismay that he was doomed to bear the burden of command over a ruined enterprise and a shattered fleet. The long voyage had consumed the provisions, and in some of the ships the crews were starving. The pestilence grew worse, and men were dying in numbers every day. On the twenty-eighth, D’Anville was buried without ceremony on a small island in the harbor. The officers met in council, and the papers of the dead commander were examined. Among them was a letter from the King in which he urged the recapture of Louisbourg as the first object of the expedition; but this was thought impracticable, and the council resolved to turn against Annapolis all the force that was left. It is said that D’Estournel opposed the attempt, insisting that it was hopeless, and that there was no alternative but to return to France. The debate was long and hot, and the decision was against him.[185] The council dissolved, and he was seen to enter his cabin in evident distress and agitation. An unusual sound was presently heard, followed by groans. His door was fastened by two bolts, put on the evening before by his order. It was burst open, and the unfortunate commander was found lying in a pool of blood, transfixed with his own sword. Enraged and mortified, he had thrown himself upon it in a fit of desperation. The surgeon drew out the blade, but it was only on the urgent persuasion of two Jesuits that the dying man would permit the wound to be dressed. He then ordered all the captains to the side of his berth, and said, “Gentlemen, I beg pardon of God and the King for what I have done, and I protest to the King that my only object was to prevent my enemies from saying that I had not executed his orders;” and he named M. de la Jonquière to command in his place. In fact, La Jonquière’s rank entitled him to do so. He was afterwards well known as governor of Canada, and was reputed a brave and able sea-officer.

La Jonquière remained at Chibucto till late in October. Messengers were sent to the Acadian settlements to ask for provisions, of which there was desperate need; and as payment was promised in good metal, and not in paper, the Acadians brought in a considerable supply. The men were encamped on shore, yet the pestilence continued its ravages. Two English prisoners were told that between twenty-three and twenty-four hundred men had been buried by sea or land since the fleet left France; and another declares that eleven hundred and thirty-five burials took place while he was at Chibucto.[186] The survivors used the clothing of the dead as gifts to the neighboring Indians, who in consequence were attacked with such virulence by the disease that of the band at Cape Sable three fourths are said to have perished. The English, meanwhile, learned something of the condition of their enemies. Towards the end of September Captain Sylvanus Cobb, in a sloop from Boston, boldly entered Chibucto Harbor, took note of the ships lying there, and, though pursued, ran out to sea and carried the results of his observations to Louisbourg.[187] A more thorough reconnoissance was afterwards made by a vessel from Louisbourg bringing French prisoners for exchange under a flag of truce; and it soon became evident that the British colonies had now nothing to fear.

La Jonquière still clung to the hope of a successful stroke at Annapolis, till in October an Acadian brought him the report that the garrison of that place had received a reinforcement of twelve hundred men. The reinforcement consisted in reality of three small companies of militia sent from Boston by Shirley. La Jonquière called a secret council, and the result seems to have been adverse to any further attempt. The journalist reports that only a thousand men were left in fighting condition, and that even of these some were dying every day.

The journalist reports that on the night of the twenty-seventh there was a council of officers on board the “Northumberland,” at which it was resolved that no choice was left but to return to France with the ships that still kept together. On the fourth of November there was another storm, and when it subsided, the “Prince d’Orange” found herself with but nine companions, all of which were transports. These had on board eleven companies of soldiers, of whom their senior officer reports that only ninety-one were in health. The pestilence made such ravages among the crews that four or five corpses were thrown into the sea every day, and there was fear that the vessels would be left helpless in mid-ocean for want of sailors to work them.[188] At last, on the seventh of December, after narrowly escaping an English squadron, they reached Port Louis in Brittany, where several ships of the fleet had arrived before them. Among these was the frigate “La Palme.” “Yesterday,” says the journalist, “I supped with M. Destrahoudal, who commands this frigate; and he told me things which from anybody else would have been incredible. This is his story, exactly as I had it from him.” And he goes on to the following effect.

After the storm of the fourteenth of September, provisions being almost spent, it was thought that there was no hope for “La Palme” and her crew but in giving up the enterprise and making all sail at once for home, since France now had no port of refuge on the western continent nearer than Quebec. Rations were reduced to three ounces of biscuit and three of salt meat a day; and after a time half of this pittance was cut off. There was diligent hunting for rats in the hold; and when this game failed, the crew, crazed with famine, demanded of their captain that five English prisoners who were on board should be butchered to appease the frenzy of their hunger. The captain consulted his officers, and they were of opinion that if he did not give his consent, the crew would work their will without it. The ship’s butcher was accordingly ordered to bind one of the prisoners, carry him to the bottom of the hold, put him to death, and distribute his flesh to the men in portions of three ounces each. The captain, walking the deck in great agitation all night, found a pretext for deferring the deed till morning, when a watchman sent aloft at daylight cried, “A sail!” The providential stranger was a Portuguese ship; and as Portugal was neutral in the war, she let the frigate approach to within hailing distance. The Portuguese captain soon came alongside in a boat, “accompanied,” in the words of the narrator, “by five sheep.” These were eagerly welcomed by the starving crew as agreeable substitutes for the five Englishmen; and, being forthwith slaughtered, were parcelled out among the men, who would not wait till the flesh was cooked, but devoured it raw.[189] Provisions enough were obtained from the Portuguese to keep the frigate’s company alive till they reached Port Louis.

There are no sufficient means of judging how far the disasters of D’Anville’s fleet were due to a neglect of sanitary precautions or to deficient seamanship. Certain it is that there were many in self-righteous New England who would have held it impious to doubt that God had summoned the pestilence and the storm to fight the battles of his modern Israel.

Undaunted by disastrous failure, the French court equipped another fleet, not equal to that of D’Anville, yet still formidable, and placed it under La Jonquière, for the conquest of Acadia and Louisbourg. La Jonquière sailed from Rochelle on the tenth of May, 1747, and on the fourteenth was met by an English fleet stronger than his own and commanded by Admirals Anson and Warren. A fight ensued, in which, after brave resistance, the French were totally defeated. Six ships-of-war, including the flag-ship, were captured, with a host of prisoners, among whom was La Jonquière himself.[190]

[165] Shirley to Newcastle, 27 September, 1745.

[166] Shirley to Newcastle, 4 December, 1745.

[167] The autograph diary of Rev. Stephen Williams is in my possession. The handwriting is detestable.

[168] On May 10, 1746, Shirley writes to Newcastle that eight hundred and ninety men had died during the winter. The sufferings of the garrison from cold were extreme.

[169] Shirley to Newcastle, 4 April, 1745.

[170] Ibid., 29 October, 1745.

[171] Newcastle to the Provincial Governors, 14 March, 1746; Shirley to Newcastle, 31 May, 1746; Proclamation of Shirley, 2 June, 1746.

[172] Hutchinson, ii. 381, note. Compare Memoirs of the Principal Transactions of the Last War.

[173] “Un ancien prisonnier affidé que l’on a mis dans nos interests.”

[174] Extrait en forme de Journal de ce qui s’est passé dans la Colonie depuis ... le 1 Décembre, 1745, jusqu’au 9 Novembre, 1746, signé Beauharnois et Hocquart.

[175] Shirley to Newcastle, 22 August, 1746.

[176] Newcastle to Shirley, 30 May, 1747.

[177] Memoirs of the Principal Transactions of the Last War.

[178] Shirley to Newcastle, 29 September, 1746. Shirley says that though the French may bombard the town, he does not think they could make a landing, as he shall have fifteen thousand good men within call to oppose them.

[179] Hutchinson, ii. 382.

[180] This list is in the journal of a captured French officer called by Shirley M. Rebateau.

[181] Journal historique du Voyage de la Flotte commandée par M. le Duc d’Enville. The writer was on board the “Prince d’Orange,” and describes what he saw (Archives du Séminaire de Québec; printed in Le Canada Français).

[182] The “Northumberland” was an English prize captured by Captains Serier and Conflans in 1744.

[183] Journal historique du Voyage.

[184] Declaration of H. Kannan and D. Deas, 23 October, 1746. Deposition of Joseph Foster, 24 October, 1746, sworn to before Jacob Wendell, J. P. These were prisoners in the ships at Chibucto.

[185] This is said by all the writers except the author of the Journal historique, who merely states that the council decided to attack Annapolis, and to detach some soldiers to the aid of Quebec. This last vote was reconsidered.

[186] Declaration of Kannan and Deas. Deposition of Joseph Foster.

[187] Report of Captain Cobb, in Shirley to Newcastle, 13 October, 1746.

[188] Journal historique.

[189] Relation du Voyage de Retour de M. Destrahoudal après la Tempête du 14 Septembre, in Journal historique.

[190] Relation du Combat rendu le 14 Mai (new style), par l’Escadre du Roy commandée par M. de la Jonquière, in Le Canada Français, Supplément de Documents inédits, 33. Newcastle to Shirley, 30 May, 1747.

Since the capture of Louisbourg, France had held constantly in view, as an object of prime importance, the recovery of her lost colony of Acadia. This was one of the chief aims of D’Anville’s expedition, and of that of La Jonquière in the next year. And to make assurance still more sure, a large body of Canadians, under M. de Ramesay, had been sent to Acadia to co-operate with D’Anville’s force; but the greater part of them had been recalled to aid in defending Quebec against the expected attack of the English. They returned when the news came that D’Anville was at Chibucto, and Ramesay, with a part of his command, advanced upon Port Royal, or Annapolis, in order to support the fleet in its promised attack on that place. He encamped at a little distance from the English fort, till he heard of the disasters that had ruined the fleet,[191] and then fell back to Chignecto, on the neck of the Acadian peninsula, where he made his quarters, with a force which, including Micmac, Malicite, and Penobscot Indians, amounted, at one time, to about sixteen hundred men.

If France was bent on recovering Acadia, Shirley was no less resolved to keep it, if he could. In his belief, it was the key of the British American colonies, and again and again he urged the Duke of Newcastle to protect it. But Newcastle seems scarcely to have known where Acadia was, being ignorant of most things except the art of managing the House of Commons, and careless of all things that could not help his party and himself. Hence Shirley’s hyperboles, though never without a basis of truth, were lost upon him. Once, it is true, he sent three hundred men to Annapolis; but one hundred and eighty of them died on the voyage, or lay helpless in Boston hospitals, and the rest could better have been spared, some being recruits from English jails, and others Irish Catholics, several of whom deserted to the French, with information of the state of the garrison.

The defence of Acadia was left to Shirley and his Assembly, who in time of need sent companies of militia and rangers to Annapolis, and thus on several occasions saved it from returning to France. Shirley was the most watchful and strenuous defender of British interests on the continent; and in the present crisis British and colonial interests were one. He held that if Acadia were lost, the peace and safety of all the other colonies would be in peril; and in spite of the immense efforts made by the French court to recover it, he felt that the chief danger of the province was not from without, but from within. “If a thousand French troops should land in Nova Scotia,” he writes to Newcastle, “all the people would rise to join them, besides all the Indians.”[192] So, too, thought the French officials in America. The governor and intendant of Canada wrote to the colonial minister: “The inhabitants, with few exceptions, wish to return under the French dominion, and will not hesitate to take up arms as soon as they see themselves free to do so; that is, as soon as we become masters of Port Royal, or they have powder and other munitions of war, and are backed by troops for their protection against the resentment of the English.”[193] Up to this time, however, though they had aided Duvivier in his attack on Annapolis so far as was possible without seeming to do so, they had not openly taken arms, and their refusal to fight for the besiegers is one among several causes to which Mascarene ascribes the success of his defence. While the greater part remained attached to France, some leaned to the English, who bought their produce and paid them in ready coin. Money was rare with the Acadians, who loved it, and were so addicted to hoarding it that the French authorities were led to speculate as to what might be the object of these careful savings.[194]

Though the Acadians loved France, they were not always ready to sacrifice their interests to her. They would not supply Ramesay’s force with provisions in exchange for his promissory notes, but demanded hard cash.[195] This he had not to give, and was near being compelled to abandon his position in consequence. At the same time, in consideration of specie payment, the inhabitants brought in fuel for the English garrison at Louisbourg, and worked at repairing the rotten chevaux de frise of Annapolis.[196]

Mascarene, commandant at that place, being of French descent, was disposed at first to sympathize with the Acadians and treat them with a lenity that to the members of his council seemed neither fitting nor prudent. He wrote to Shirley: “The French inhabitants are certainly in a very perilous situation, those who pretend to be their friends and old masters having let loose a parcel of banditti to plunder them; whilst, on the other hand, they see themselves threatened with ruin if they fail in their allegiance to the British Government.”[197]

This unhappy people were in fact between two fires. France claimed them on one side, and England on the other, and each demanded their adhesion, without regard to their feelings or their welfare. The banditti of whom Mascarene speaks were the Micmac Indians, who were completely under the control of their missionary, Le Loutre, and were used by him to terrify the inhabitants into renouncing their English allegiance and actively supporting the French cause. By the Treaty of Utrecht France had transferred Acadia to Great Britain, and the inhabitants had afterwards taken an oath of fidelity to King George. Thus they were British subjects; but as their oath had been accompanied by a promise, or at least a clear understanding, that they should not be required to take arms against Frenchmen or Indians, they had become known as the “Neutral French.” This name tended to perplex them, and in their ignorance and simplicity they hardly knew to which side they owed allegiance. Their illiteracy was extreme. Few of them could sign their names, and a contemporary well acquainted with them declares that he knew but a single Acadian who could read and write.[198] This was probably the notary, Le Blanc, whose compositions are crude and illiterate. Ignorant of books and isolated in a wild and remote corner of the world, the Acadians knew nothing of affairs, and were totally incompetent to meet the crisis that was soon to come upon them. In activity and enterprise they were far behind the Canadians, who looked on them as inferiors. Their pleasures were those of the humblest and simplest peasants; they were contented with their lot, and asked only to be let alone. Their intercourse was unceremonious to such a point that they never addressed each other, or, it is said, even strangers, as monsieur. They had the social equality which can exist only in the humblest conditions of society, and presented the phenomenon of a primitive little democracy, hatched under the wing of an absolute monarchy. Each was as good as his neighbor; they had no natural leaders, nor any to advise or guide them, except the missionary priest, who in every case was expected by his superiors to influence them in the interest of France, and who, in fact, constantly did so. While one observer represents them as living in a state of primeval innocence, another describes both men and women as extremely foul of speech; from which he draws inferences unfavorable to their domestic morals,[199] which, nevertheless, were commendable. As is usual with a well-fed and unambitious peasantry, they were very prolific, and are said to have doubled their number every sixteen years. In 1748 they counted in the peninsula of Nova Scotia between twelve and thirteen thousand souls.[200] The English rule had been of the lightest,—so light that it could scarcely be felt; and this was not surprising, since the only instruments for enforcing it over a population wholly French were some two hundred disorderly soldiers in the crumbling little fort of Annapolis; and the province was left, perforce, to take care of itself.

From the first outbreak of the war it was evident that the French built their hopes of recovering Acadia largely on a rising of the Acadians against the English rule, and that they spared no efforts to excite such a rising. Early in 1745 a violent and cruel precaution against this danger was suggested. William Shirreff, provincial secretary, gave it as his opinion that the Acadians ought to be removed, being a standing menace to the colony.[201] This is the first proposal of such a nature that I find. Some months later, Shirley writes that, on a false report of the capture of Annapolis by the French, the Acadians sang Te Deum, and that every sign indicates that there will be an attempt in the spring to capture Annapolis, with their help.[202] Again, Shirley informs Newcastle that the French will get possession of Acadia unless the most dangerous of the inhabitants are removed, and English settlers put in their place.[203] He adds that there are not two hundred and twenty soldiers at Annapolis to defend the province against the whole body of Acadians and Indians, and he tells the minister that unless the expedition against Canada should end in the conquest of that country, the removal of some of the Acadians will be a necessity. He means those of Chignecto, who were kept in a threatening attitude by the presence of Ramesay and his Canadians, and who, as he thinks, had forfeited their lands by treasonable conduct. Shirley believes that families from New England might be induced to take their place, and that these, if settled under suitable regulations, would form a military frontier to the province of Nova Scotia “strong enough to keep the Canadians out,” and hold the Acadians to their allegiance.[204] The Duke of Bedford thinks the plan a good one, but objects to the expense.[205] Commodore Knowles, then governor of Louisbourg, who, being threatened with consumption and convinced that the climate was killing him, vented his feelings in strictures against everything and everybody, was of opinion that the Acadians, having broken their neutrality, ought to be expelled at once, and expresses the amiable hope that should his Majesty adopt this plan, he will charge him with executing it.[206]

Shirley’s energetic nature inclined him to trenchant measures, and he had nothing of modern humanitarianism; but he was not inhuman, and he shrank from the cruelty of forcing whole communities into exile. While Knowles and others called for wholesale expatriation, he still held that it was possible to turn the greater part of the Acadians into safe subjects of the British Crown;[207] and to this end he advised the planting of a fortified town where Halifax now stands, and securing by forts and garrisons the neck of the Acadian peninsula, where the population was most numerous and most disaffected. The garrisons, he thought, would not only impose respect, but would furnish the Acadians with what they wanted most,—ready markets for their produce,—and thus bind them to the British by strong ties of interest. Newcastle thought the plan good, but wrote that its execution must be deferred to a future day. Three years later it was partly carried into effect by the foundation of Halifax; but at that time the disaffection of the Acadians had so increased, and the hope of regaining the province for France had risen so high, that this partial and tardy assertion of British authority only spurred the French agents to redoubled efforts to draw the inhabitants from the allegiance they had sworn to the Crown of England.