 Chapter 4 of a Chronicle of Louisburg, 1720–1760. The ten years of the Second French Regime in Louisburg were divided into very different halves. During the first five years, from 1749 to 1753, the mighty rivals were as much at peace all over their conflicting frontiers as they had ever been in the past. But from 1754 to 1758, a great and this time a decisive war kept drawing continually nearer until its strangling coils at last crushed Louisburg to death. Three significant events marked 1749, the first of the five peaceful years. Louisburg was handed over to its new French garrison, the British founded Halifax, and the imperial government indemnified New England in full for the siege of 1745. Halifax was intended partly as a counter-poise to Louisburg and partly as a plast arm for one of the two local footholds of British seapower, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, which between them, narrowed the French line of communication with Canada into a single precarious strait. The New England indemnity was meant in the first instance to be a payment for service done, but it was also intended to soften colonial resentment at the giving up of Louisburg. A specially gracious royal message was sent to the Council and Assembly of Massachusetts assuring them in His Majesty's name that their conduct will always entitle them in a particular manner to his royal favour and protection. This message, however, did not reconcile the provincial army to the disappointment of their own expectations, nor did it dispose the colonies in general to be any more the amenable to government from London. They simply regarded the indemnity as the skin-flit payment of an overdue debt and the message as no more than the thanks they had well deserved. But the money was extremely welcome to the people who would have been bankrupt without it. Nearly a quarter of a million sterling was sent out in two hundred seventeen cases of Spanish dollars and one hundred barrels of coppers which were driven through the streets of Boston in twenty-seven trucks. The next three years in Louisburg were completely uneventful. The town resumed its former life but in a still more makeshift fashion. Nobody knew how long the truce would last and nobody wanted to take root commercially in a place that might experience another violent change at any time. Nevertheless, smuggling flourished as vigorously as before. British shipping did most of it. Many vessels came from England, many from Boston, and some, and very active ones, from Halifax. Joshua Magger smuggled from Flants to Neuesburg, from Louisburg to Magger's Beach near Halifax, and from Halifax all over Acadia and the adjacent colonies. He also supplied the mick-max with scalping knives and tomahawks for use against his own countrymen. He died a very rich man in England, leaving his fortune to his daughter, who with her spendthrift husband, the Duke de Boillon, was guillotined during the French Revolution. The officials were naturally affected by the same uncertainty, which made them the more than ever determined to get rich and go home. The intended bio was promoted to Quebec, there to assist his country's enemies by the worst corruption ever known in Canada. But the new intendant, Prévo, though a man of very inferior talent, did his best to follow Bigo's lead. French regulars still regarded the Louisburg routine as their most disgusting duty, but it became more tolerable with the increase of the garrison. The fortifications were examined, reported on, repaired, and extended. The engineers, like all the other Frenchmen connected with unhappy Louisburg, Bigo alone accepted, were second and third rate men, and the actual work was done as badly as before, but on the whole the place was strengthened, especially by a battery near the lighthouse. With this and the island battery one on either side of the narrow entrance, which the royal battery faced directly, almost a hundred guns to be brought to bear on any vessels trying to force their way in. The end of the five years truce was marked by voluminous reports and elaborate arguments to prove how well Louisburg was being governed, how admirably the fortifications had been attended to, with the inadequate means at the intendant's disposal, and how desirable it was, from every point of view for the king to spend a great deal more money all around on the immediate future. Fisheries, ship-building, fortification, Indians, trade, religion, and the naval and military situation were all represented as only needing more money to become quite perfect. Louisburg was correctly enough described as an indispensable link between France and the long chain of French posts in the valleys of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. But less well explained in America and less well understood in Europe was the fact that the separate military chains in old France and new could never hold an overseas dominion unless a naval chain united them. Some few Frenchmen understood this thoroughly, but most did not, and France as a whole hoped that a vigorous offensive on land would more than counterbalance whatever she might lose by an enforced defensive on the sea. In 1754 Washington's first shot beyond the Alleghenes broke the hollow truce between the French and British colonies, whose lines of expansion had once more inevitably crossed each other's path. This proved to be the beginning of the last French and Indian war in American history of that British conquest of Canada which formed part of what contemporary Englishmen had called the Maritime War and of that great military struggle which continental Europe called the Seven Years War. At the year 1755 saw Braddock's defeat in the West, the Battle of Lake George in the centre, and two pregnant events in the East, one on either side of Lewisburg, the expulsion of the Acadians, and the capture by Boscoen of two Frenchmen of war with several hundred soldiers who were to reinforce the army that was soon to be commanded by Moncombe. The next year, 1756, saw the formal declaration of war in Europe, its continued prosecution in America, and the taking of Oswego, which was the first of Moncombe's four victories against the overwhelming British, but Lewisburg still remained untouched. Not until 1757 was the first attempt made to break this last sea link with France, there was a very natural anxiety among the British on both sides of the Atlantic to do conspicuously well against Lewisburg. Fort Necessity, Braddock's defeat, and Moncombe's staring capture of Oswego, coming with cumulative effect in three successive campaigns, had created a feeling of bitter disappointment in America. While the black hole of Calcutta, the loss of Menorca, and worse still, Bing's failure to bring a bittersweet fleet into decisive action had wounded the national pride in England. But 1757 turned out to be no better than its disconcerting predecessors. True, England's ally, Frederick Regate, won consummate victories at Rockwalk and Luzon, but that was at the end of a very desperate campaign. True also that Clive won Placee and took Chandor-Nagore. But those were far away from English-speaking homes, while heavy reverses close at hand brought down the adverse balance. Pitt, the greatest of all civilian ministers of war, was dismissed from office and not reinstated till the British Empire had been without a cabinet for eleven weeks. The French overran the hole of Hanover and rounded up the Duke of Cumberland at Closter Seven. Mordent and his petty fogging councils of war turned the joint expedition against Rochefort into a complete fiasco, while Montcom again defeated the British in America by taking Fort William Henry. The taking of Lewisburg would have been a very welcome victory in the midst of so much gloom, but the British were engaged in party strife at home. They were disunited in America, and neither the naval nor the military leader of the joint expedition against Lewisburg was the proper man to act either alone or with his colleague. Speed was of prime importance, yet Admiral Holburn did not sail from England for Halifax till May. General the Earl of Luton was smaller still. He drew in the troops from the northern frontier, concentrated them in New York, and laid an embargo on shipping to keep a secret which was already out. Finally he and Sir Charles Hardy sailed for Halifax to keep their rendezvous with Holburn, from whom no news had come. They arrived there before him, but his fleet came limping in during the next ten days after a bad buffeting on its transatlantic voyage. Luton now had nearly twelve thousand men, whom he landed and drilled throughout July. His preparations were so meticulously careful that they even included a vegetable garden, which, though an excellent precaution in its own way, ought to have been left to the commandant of the base. So thought Sir Charles Haye, who was put under arrest for saying that all the money was being spent in fighting sham battles and planting out cabbages. However, a reconnaissance of Lewisburg had been made by Gorham of the Rangers, whose very imperfect report induced Holburn and Luton to get ready to sail. But, just as they were preparing to begin too late, a Newfoundland vessel came in with captured French dispatches, which showed that Adrol Lamotte had united his three squadrons in Lewisburg Harbor, where he was at anchor with twenty-two ships of the line and several frigates, the whole carrying thirteen hundred and sixty guns. This was correct. But the garrison was exaggerated by at least a third in the same dispatch, which estimated as numbering over seven thousand men. The late lists of the season, the strength of the French, and the practical certainty of failing to take Lewisburg by forcing the attack home at any cost, were very sensibly held under existing circumstances to be a sufficient cause for withdrawing the army. The fleet, however, sailed north, in the hope of inducing Lamotte to come out for a battle in the open. But at that particular juncture, Lamotte was right not to risk decisive action. A week later he was equally wrong to refuse it. Holburn's fleet had been dispersed by a September hurricane of extraordinary violence. One ship became a total wreck. Nine were dismasted. Several had to throw their guns overboard. None was fit for immediate service. But Lamotte did not even reconnoitre much less annihilate his helpless enemy. Pitt returned to power at the end of June 1757 in time to plan a worldwide campaign for 1758, though not in time to choose the best commanders and to change the whole course of the war. This became possible only in the Empire year of 1759. The English speaking peoples have nearly always begun their great wars badly, and have gradually worked up to a climax of victory after being stung into proper leadership and organization by several exasperating failures. And though now in the third year of their most momentive struggle for overseas dominion, they were not even yet altogether prepared. Nevertheless, Pitt wielded the amphibious might of Britain with a master hand. Sea power, mercantile and naval, enabled him to command the riches of the world and become the paymaster of many thousand oppressions under Frederick the Great and Ferdinand of Brunswick. He also sent a small British army to the continent, but he devoted his chief attention to working out a phase of the maritime war which included India on one flank and the Canadian frontiers on the other. Sometimes with and sometimes without a contingent from the army, the British navy checkmated, isolated or defeated the French and Europe, Asia, Africa and America. The preliminary isolation of Lewisburg was a particularly effective stroke of naval strategy. Even before 1758 began, the first French fleet that left for Lewisburg had been shadowed from Toulon and had been shut up in Cartagena. A second French fleet was then sent to help the first one out, but it was attacked on the way and totally defeated. In April the first fleet made another attempt to sail, but it was chased into Rochefort by Hawke and put out of action for the rest of the campaign. The third French fleet did manage to reach Lewisburg, but its admiral, Duchofau, rightly fearing annihilation in the harbour there and wishing to keep some touch between old France and new, sailed for Quebec with most of his best ships. Quebec and the rest of Canada were themselves on the defensive. For Aberconby was leading 15,000 men, the largest single army America had ever seen, straight up the line of Lake Shine Plain. Moncom defeated him at Ticonderoga in July, but that gave no relief to Lewisburg because the total British forces threatening the Canadian inland frontier were still quite strong enough to keep the French on the strict defensive. Thus Lewisburg was completely isolated both by land and sea. It was stronger and more extensive than during the first siege. It had a better governor, Droucourt, a better and a larger garrison, more food and ammunition, and what it formerly lacked altogether the support of a considerable fleet. Droucourt was a gallant soldier. His garrison numbered nearly 3,000 effective regulars, with about 1,000 militiamen and some 500 Indians. Seventeen mortars and over 200 cannon were mounted on the walls, as well as on the outworks of the Royal Island and Lighthouse batteries. There were 13 vessels in the fleet, mounting 590 guns, and carrying over 3,500 men. This made the French grand total about 800 guns and 8,000 men. But not all these were really effective. Ships at anchor lose a good deal of their fighting value. Crews are less efficient when assured than when they are afloat, and the French ships were mostly fought at anchor, while the crews were gradually landed for the defence of the crowded little town. Then the Indians were comparatively useless in a fort. The militia were not good soldiers anywhere. Moreover, the three kinds of regulars, French, Canadian, and foreign, did not get on very well together, while the fleet as a whole got on no better with the army as a whole. The British amphibious force presented a striking contrast to this. Its naval and military parts worked together like the two branches of one united service. The army and navy naturally understood each other better than the two services of less amphibious countries. And when a statesman like Pitt and a first lord of the Admiralty like Anson were together at headquarters, there was no excuse for misunderstandings at the front. Boscawen and Amherst, both distinguished members of distinguished service families, were the best of colleagues. Boscawen had somewhat over Amherst a little under 12,000 men. Boscawen's fleet comprised 39 sail from a 90 gun ship of the line down to a nine-gun sloop. The British grand total therefore exceeded Ducours by over three to one, counting mere numbers alone. If expert efficiency be taken, for the sake of a more exact comparison, it is not too much to say that the odds in favor of the British personnel and armament were really four to one. On the other hand, the French had the walls of Louisburg to redress the balance in their favor. These walls were the crucial factor in the problem. Both sides knew they were far from being impregnable. But how long could they withstand regular siege? If for only one month, then they were useless as a protection to Quebec. If for two months, then Quebec and New France were safe until the following year. Boscawen left England in February. Amherst followed separately. One of the three bigotry generals in Amherst's army was Wolf, of whom we shall hear more presently. The rendezvous was Halifax, where boatwork and landing exercises were sedulously carried out by the troops. Towards the end of May, Boscawen sailed out of Halifax, though Amherst had not yet arrived. They met at sea. The Dublin, which had brought Amherst across so slowly, then went very sickly into Halifax, while Amherst joined Boscawen and the whole fleet and convoy bore away for Louisburg. The French had been expecting them for at least a month, as scouts kept appearing almost every day, while Hardy's squadron of nine sail had been maintaining a sort of open blockade. On the night of June 1st the French lookouts in Gaboris Bay saw more lights than usual to the southward. Next morning, Louisburg was early as stir, anxiously eager to catch the first glimpse of this great destroying armada, which for several expected hours lay invisible and dread, behind a curtain of dense fog. Then a light sea breeze came in from the Atlantic. The curtain drew back at its touch. And there, in one white enormous crescent, all round the deep blue offing, stood the mighty fleet, closing in for the final death-grip on its prey. Nearly a whole week went by before the British landed. Each day the scouting boats and vessels stood in as close as possible along the shore. But they always found the smashing surf too high. At last on the 8th the whole army put off in three brigades of boats, supported by the frigates, which fired at the French defences. All three landing-places were threatened simultaneously. White Point, Flat Point, and Kennington Cove. These landing-places were, respectively, one, two, and four miles west of Louisburg. The intervening ground mostly hid them from the ramparts, and they had to depend upon their own defences. Drew Cour had sent out two-thirds of his garrison to oppose the landing. Each Point was protected by artillery and entrenchments. Eight guns were mounted, and a thousand men stood guard over the quarter-mile of beach which lay between the two little surf-flashed promontories of Kennington Cove. But Wolf's brigade made straight for shore. The French held their fire until the leading boats were well within short musket-shot. Then they began so furiously that Wolf, whose tall lank figure was most conspicuous as he stood up in the stern sheets, waved his cane to make the boats shear off. It looked as if the first successful landing would have to be made elsewhere. A bitter disappointment to this young and ardent Brigadier, whose command included the pick of the Grenadiers, Light Infantry, and Highlanders. But three boatloads of Light Infantry pushed on against the inner point of the Cove. Perhaps their officers turned their blind eye on Wolf's signal, as Nelson did on Parker's Recall at Copenhagen. But, whatever the reason, these three boats went in smash against the rocks and put their men ashore, drenched to the skin. Major Scott, commanding the Light Infantry and Rangers, followed them at once. Then Wolf, seeing they had gained a foothold where the point afforded them a little cover, signalled the whole brigade to land there in succession. He pushed his own boat through, jumped in waist deep, and waited ashore. This sudden change, quite unexpected by either friend or foe, greatly disconcerted the French. They attacked Major Scott, who withstood them with a handful of men till reinforcements came clambering up the rocks behind him. With these reinforcements came Wolf, who formed the men into line, and carried the nearest battery with the bayonet. The remaining French, seeing that Wolf had affected a lodgement on their inner flank, were so afraid of being cut off from Louisburg that they ran back and round towards the next position at flat point. But before they reached it, they saw its own defenders running back because the British were also landing at white point. Here, too, the defenses were abandoned as soon as the little garrison found itself faced by greatly superior numbers of float and deserted by its fellow garrisons ashore. The retreating French kept up a sort of running fight till they got under the covering fire of Louisburg when the pursuing British immediately drew off. Considering the number of boats that were stove and the intensity of the first French fire, the British loss was remarkably small. Only one hundred and nine killed, wounded, and drowned. The French loss was still less, but in view of the difference between the respective grand totals, it was a good deal heavier in proportion. That night, the glare of a big fire inside the harbour showed that Droucourt felt too weak to hold the royal battery. Unlike his incompetent predecessor, however, he took away everything movable that could be turned to good account in Louisburg, and he left the works a useless ruin. The following day he destroyed and abandoned the battery at Lighthouse Point. Thus two fortifications were given up, one of them for the second time before a single shot had been fired either from or against them. Time, labour, and expense had all gone for worse than nothing as the positions were at once used by the enemy on each occasion. The wasted expense was of the usual kind. One half spent on inferior construction, the other pocketed by the Louisburg officials. Droucourt himself was not at all to blame, either for the way the works were built or the way in which they had to be abandoned. With odds of more than three to one against him, he had no men to spare for trying to keep the British at arm's length. Ammers pitched his camp in a crescent two miles long facing Louisburg two miles off. His left overlooked the French squadron in the southwest harbour next to Louisburg at the distance of one mile. His right rested on flat point. Thus Louisburg itself was entirely surrounded both by land and sea, for the gaps left at the Royal Battery and Lighthouse Point were immediately seized by the British. Wolfe marched round the harbour on the 12th with thirteen hundred infantry and a strong detachment of artillery. The guns for the Royal Battery and other points inside this harbour were hauled into place by teams of about a hundred men each. Those for Lighthouse Point were sent round by sea, landed with immense difficulty more than a mile distance on the rock-bound shore, hauled up the cliff, and then dragged back over the roughest of ground to the Battery. It was, in fact, a repetition of what the American militiamen had done in 1745. Wolfe worked incessantly, directing and encouraging his toiling men. The blue jackets seconded his efforts by doing even harder work. Their boats were often stove, and a catamaran was wrecked with a brass twenty-four pounder on board. But nothing could stop the perfect cooperation between the two halves of the single United Service. The admiral in general wrote Wolfe, have carried on the public service with great harmony, industry, and union. Mr. Boscoen has given all, and even more than we could ask of him, he has furnished arms and ammunition, pioneers, sappers, miners, gunners, carpenters, and boats. While Wolfe was doing his eight days work of preparation at the Lighthouse Battery between the 12th and the 20th, Amherst, whose favourite precept, was slow and sure, was performing an even more arduous task by building a road from flat point to where he intended to make his trenches. This road meandered over the least bad line that could be found in that country of alternate rock, bog, sand, scrub, bush, and marshy ponds. The working party was always a thousand strong, and shifts of course were constant. Boscoen landed marines to man the works along the shore, and blue jackets for any handyman's job required. This proved a great advantage to the army, which had so many more men set free for other duties. The landing of stores went on from sunrise to sunset, whenever the pounding surf calmed down enough. Landing the guns was, of course, much harder still. It accounted for most of the hundred boats that were dashed to pieces against that devouring shore. Thurrow and persistent as this work was, however, it gave the garrison of Lewisburg little outward sign of what was happening just beyond the knolls and hillocks. Besides, just at this time, when there was a lull before the storm that was soon to burst from wolf and Amherst, both sides had more dramatic things to catch the general eye. First, there was the worthy namesake of the sauthey Erethusa in the rival British navy, the Erethus, whose daring and skillful captain, Vocolin, had moored her beside the bearish-ois, or sea-pond, so that he could outflank Amherst's approach against the right-land face of Lewisburg. Then, of still more immediate interest, was the nimble little echo, which tried to run the gauntlet of the British fleet on June 18th, a day long afterwards made famous on the field of Waterloo. Ducourt had entrusted his wife and several other ladies to the captain of the echo, who was to make a dash for Quebec with dispatches for the Governor of Canada. A muffling fog shut down and seemed to promise her safely from the British, though it brought added danger from that wrecking coast. With infinite precautions she slipped out on the ebb between the French at the island-battery and Wolves' strenuous workers at the lighthouse point, but the breeze that bore her north also raised the fog enough to let the Juneau and Sutherland cite her and give chase. She crowded on oppressive sail till she was overhauled, when she fought her captors till her case was hopeless. Madame Ducourt and the other ladies were then sent back to Louisburg with every possible consideration for their feelings. This act of kindness was remembered later on, when a regular interlude of courtesies followed Ducourt's offer to send his own particularly skillful surgeon to any wounded British officer who might need his services. Amherst sent in several letters and messages from wounded Frenchmen and a special message from himself to Madame Ducourt, complimenting her on her bravery and begging her acceptance of some West Indian pineapples. Once more the flag of truce came out, this time to return the compliment with a basket of wine. As the gate swung to, the cannon roared again on either side. Amherst was no unmerited compliment, for Madame Ducourt used to mount the man parts every day, no matter what the danger was, and fire three cannon for the honour of her king. But the French had no monopoly in women's work. True, there were no officers' wives to play the heroine on the British side, but there were others to play a humbler part and play it well. In those days each ship or regiment bore a certain proportion of women on their books for laundering another work which is still done, at their own option, by women married on the strength of the army. Most of the several hundred women in the besieging fleet and army became so keen to see the batteries armed that they volunteered to team the guns, which in some cases they actually did, with excellent effect. By June 26 Lewisburg had no defences left beyond its own walls, except reduced French squadron huddled together in the southwest harbour. The more exposed ships had come down on the 21st after a day's bombardment from Wolfe's terrific battery at Lighthouse Point. They in return making an infernal fire from all their broadsides, but wonderful to think of, no harm done us. Five days later every single gun in the island battery was dumb. At the same time Amherst occupied Green Hill, directly opposite the Citadel, and only half a mile away. Yet Drudecourt, with dauntless resolution, resisted for another month. His object was not to save his own doomed fortress, but Quebec. He needed all his resolution. The British were pressing him on every side, determined to end the siege in time to transfer their force elsewhere. Lewisburg itself was visibly weakening. The walls were already crumbling under Amherst's converging fire, though the British attack had not yet begun in earnest. Surely, thoroughly, and with an irresistible zeal, the besiegers had begun their road, dragged up their guns, and begun to worm their way forward under skillfully constructed cover towards the right land face of Lewisburg, next to the southwest harbour, where the ground was less boggy than on the left. The French ships fired on the British approaches, but with one notable exception, not effectively, because some of them masked others, while they were all under British fire themselves, both from the Lighthouse and the Royal Batteries, as well as from smaller batteries along the harbour. Vocolin, who shares with Iberville the honour of being the naval hero of New France, was the one exception. He fought the Erythus so splendidly that he hampered the British left attack long enough to give Lewisburg a comparative respite for a few hasty repairs. But nothing could now resist Bosgowan if the British should choose to run in past the demolished island battery and attack the French fleet, first from a distance with the help of the Lighthouse and Royal Batteries, and then hand to hand. So the French general de Goutte agreed to sink four of his largest vessels in the fairway. This, however, still left a gap, so two more were sunk. The passage was then mistakenly reported to be safely closed. The crews, two thousand strong, were landed and camped along the streets. This caused outspoken annoyance to the army and to the inhabitants, who thought the crews had not shown fight enough afloat, who consequently thought them of little use ashore, who found them in the way, and who feared that they had come in without bringing a proper contribution of provisions to the common stock. The Erythus was presently withdrawn from her perilous birth next to the British left approach, as she was the only frigate left which seemed to have a chance of running the gauntlet of Boscoen's fleet. Her shotholes were carefully stopped, and on the night of July 14th she was silently towed to the harbour mouth whence she sailed for France, with dispatches from Ducourt and de Goutte. The fog held dense, but the wind was light, and she could hardly forge ahead under every stitch of canvas. All round her the lights of the British fleet and convoy rose, and fell with the heaving rollers like little embers blurring through the mist. Yet Vocolin took his dark and silent way quite safely in and out between them, and reached France just after Louisburg had fallen. Meanwhile, Drecourt had made several sorties against the British front, while Boisebert had attacked their rear with a few hundred Indians, Acadians and Canadians. Boisebert's attack was simply brushed aside by the rear guard of Amherst's overwhelming force. The American Rangers ought to have defeated it themselves without the aid of regulars, but they were not of the same sort of men as those who had besieged Louisburg thirteen years before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been enlisted now. Of course there were a few good men with some turn for soldiering, but most were of the wasteful and warf rat kind. Wolf expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms. About five hundred Rangers are come, which to appearance are little better than Lacanay. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending on them in action. They fall down dead in their own dirt, and desert by battalions, officers and all. Drecourt's sorties, made by good French regulars, were much more serious than Boisebert's feeble, irregular attack. On the night of July 8th, while Moncombe's Ticonderogan heroes were resting on their hard-won field a thousand miles inland, Drecourt's best troops crept out on scene and charged the British right. Lord Dunn-Donald and several of his men were killed, while the rest were driven back to the second approach, where desperate work was done with the bayonet in the dark. But Wolf commanded that part of the line, and his supports were under arms in a moment. The French attack had broken up into a score of little rough-and-tumble fights. Bayonets, butts and swords, all at it, friend and foe, mixed up in well confusion. So the first properly formed troops carried all before them. The knots of struggling combatants separated into French and British. The French fell back on their defences, their friends inside, fired on the British, and Wolf, having regained his ground, retired in the same good order on his lines. A week later, Wolf suddenly dashed forward on the British left and seized Gallows Hill, within a musket-shot of the French right bastion. Here his men dug hard all night long, in spite of the fierce fire kept up on them, at point-blank range. In the morning reliefs marched in, and the digging still continued. Sappers, miners, and infantry reliefs, they never stopped till they had burrowed forward another hundred yards, and the last great breaching battery had opened its annihilating fire. By the twenty-first, both sides saw that the end was near, so far as the walls were concerned, but it was not only the walls that were failing. For on that very afternoon of the twenty-first, a British seamen gunners, cleverly planted bomb, found out a French ship's magazine, exploded it with shattering force, and set fire to the ships on either side. All three blazed furiously. The crews ran to quarters and did their best, but all to no purpose. Meanwhile, the British batteries had turned every available gun on the conflagration, so as to prevent the French from saving anything. Between the roaring flames, the bursting shells and the whizzing cannonballs, the three doomed vessels soon became an inferno too hot for men to stay in. The crews swarmed over the side and escaped, not however without losing a good many of their number. Then the British concentrated on the only two remaining vessels, the Prudent and the Bien-Faison, but the French sailors, with admirable pluck and judgment, managed to haul them round to a safer berth. Next day, a similar disaster befell the Lewisburg headquarters. A shell went through the roof of the barracks at the King's Bastion, burst among the men there and set the whole place on fire. As the first tongues of flame shot up, the British concentrated on them. The French ran to the threatened spot and worked hard in spite of the storm of British shot and shell. But nothing was saved, except through corps' own quarters. During the confusion, the wind blew some burning debris against the timbers, which protected the nearest casemates from exploding shells. An alarm was raised among the women and children inside. A panic followed, and the civilians of both sexes had their nerves so shaken that they thought of nothing but surrender on the spot. Hardly had this excitement been allayed when the main barracks themselves caught fire. Fortunately, they had been cleared when the other fire had shown how imminent the danger was to every structure along the walls. The barracks were in special danger of fire, for they had been left with the same wooden roof which the New Englanders had put on thirteen years before. Again, the British guns converged their devastating fire on the point of danger and the whole place was burned to the ground. Most of the troops were now deprived of all shelter. They had no choice but to share the streets with a still larger number of sailors than those to whom they had formerly objected. Yet they had scarcely tried to settle down and make the best of it before another batch of sailors came crowding in from the last of the whole French fleet. At one o'clock in the morning of July 25th a rousing British cheer from the harbour had announced an attack on the prudent and the bien-faisant by six hundred blue brackets who had stolen in with muffled oars just on the stroke of midnight. Presently the sound of fighting died away and all was still. At first the nearest gunners on the walls had lost their heads and begun blazing away at random, but they were soon stopped and neither side dared fire not knowing whom the shots might kill. Then as the escaping French came into the walls a bright glare told that the prudent was on fire. She had cut her cable during the fight and was lying hopelessly stranded right under the inner walls of Lewisburg. The bien-faisant, however, though now assailed by every gun the French could bring to bear, was towed off to a snug berth beside the lighthouse battery, the British blue brackets, showing the same disregard of danger as their gallant enemies had shown on the 21st when towing her to safety in the opposite direction. At daylight Dracour made a thorough inspection of the walls while the only four serviceable cannon left fired slowly on as if for the funeral of Lewisburg. The British looked stronger than ever and so close in that their sharpshooters could pick off the French gunners from the foot of the Glossy. The best of the French diarists made this despairing entry, quote, not a house in the whole place but has felt the force of their cannon ad. Between yesterday morning and seven o'clock tonight, from a thousand to twelve hundred shells have fallen inside the town, while at least forty cannon have been firing incessantly as well. The surgeons have to run at many a cry of where shall, for fearless they should share the patient's fate, unquote. Amherst had offered to spare the island or any one of the French ships if Dracour would put his hospital in either place. But for some unexplained reason Dracour declined the offer, though Amherst pointed out that no spot within so small a target as Lewisburg itself could possibly be made immune by any gunners in the world. Reduced to the last extremity, the French Council of War decided to ask for terms. Baskowen and Amherst replied that the whole garrison must surrender in an hour. Dracour sent back to beg for better terms, but the second British answer was an even sterner. Complete surrender, yes or no, in half an hour. Resentment still ran high against the French for the massacre at Fort William Henry the year before. The actual massacre had been the work of drunken Indians. The Canadians present had looked on. The French, headed by Moncombe, had risked their lives to save the prisoners. But such distinctions had been blotted out in the general rage among the British on both sides of the Atlantic. And so Lewisburg was now made the scapegoat. Dracour at once wrote back to say that he stood by his first proposal, which meant, of course, that he was ready to face the storming of his works and no quarter for his garrison. His flag of truce started off with this defiance. But Prevo, the intendant, with other civilians now came forward on behalf of the inhabitants, to beg for immediate surrender on any terms, rather than that they should all be exposed to the perils of the assault. Dracour then gave way and sent an officer running after the defiant flag of truce. As soon as the second messenger got outside the walls he called out at the top of his voice, we accept, we accept. He then caught up to the bearer of the flag of truce when both went straight on to British headquarters. Boscawen and Amherst were quite prepared for either surrender or assault. The storming parties had their scaling ladders ready. The forlorn hopes had been told off to lead the different columns. Each gun was loaded, afloat, and ashore. The fleet were waiting for the signal to file in and turn a thousand cannon against the walls. Nothing was lacking for complete success. On the other hand, their terms were also ready waiting. The garrison was to be sent to England as prisoners of war. The whole of Louisburg, Cape Breton, and Île Saint-Jean, now Prince Edward Island, were to be surrendered immediately with all the public property they contained. The West Gate was to be handed over to a British guard at eight the next morning, and the French arms were to be laid down for good at noon. With this document the British commanders sent in the following note. Sir, we have the honour to send your Excellency the signed articles of capitulation. Lieutenant Colonel D'Anthony has spoken on behalf of the people in the town. We have no intention of molesting them, but will give them all the protection in our power. Your Excellency will kindly sign the duplicate of the terms and send it back to us. It only remains for us to assure your Excellency that we shall seize every opportunity of convincing you that we are, with the most perfect consideration, your Excellency's most obedient servants, Yves Baskowen and Jay Amherst. No terms were offered, either to the Indians or to the armed Canadians on account of Fort William Henry, and it is certain that all these would have been put to the sword to the very last man, Hedracourt, decided to stand in assault. To the relief of everyone concerned the Indians paddled off quietly during the night, which luckily happened to be unusually dark and calm. The Canadians either followed them or mingled with the unarmed inhabitants. This awkward problem therefore solved itself. Few went to bed that last French night in Louisburg. All responsible officials were busy with duties, reports, and general superintendents. The townsfolk and soldiery were restless and inclined to drown their humiliation in the many little cabaret which stood open all night. A very different place, the parish church, was also kept open and for a very different purpose. Many hasty marriages were performed, partly from a holy groundless fear of British license and partly because those who wished to remain in Cape Breton thought they would not be allowed to do so unless they were married. Precisely, at eight the next morning, Major Farquhar drew up his grenadiers in front of the breast gate, which was immediately surrendered to him. No one but the officers concerned witnessed this first ceremony, but the whole population thronged every point of vantage round the esplanade to see the formal surrender at noon. All the British admirals and generals were present on parade as Ducours stepped forward, saluted, and handed his sword to Boscowan. His officers followed his example. Then the troops laid down their arms in the ranks as they stood, many dashing down their muskets with a muttered curse. The French, naval, military, and civilian were soon embarked. The curse of Louisburg followed most of them in one form or another. The combatants were coldly received when they eventually returned to France, in spite of their gallant defence, and in spite of their having saved Quebec for that campaign. Several hundreds of the inhabitants were shipwrecked and drowned. One transport was abandoned off the coast of Prince Edward Island, with the loss of two hundred lives. Another sprang a leak as she was nearing England, whereupon to their eternal dishonour the crew of a British merchant seamen took all the boats and started to pull off alone. The three hundred French prisoners, men, women, and children crowded the ship's side and begged that, if they were themselves to be abandoned, their priests should be saved. A boat reluctantly put back for him. Then, leaving the ship to her fate, the crew pulled for pensance, where the people had just been celebrating the glorious victory of Louisburg. The French loss had been enough without this. About one in five of all the combatants had been hit. Twice as many were on the sick list. Officers and men, officials and traders, fishermen, and other inhabitants all lost something, in certain cases everything they had, and it was to nothing but the sheer ruin of all French power beside the American Atlantic that Madame du Cour waved her long white scarf in a last farewell. France was stung to the quick. Her sea-link gone she feared that the whole of Canada would soon be won by the same relentless British sea-power which was quite as irresistible as it was ubiquitous in the mighty hands of Pitt. So deeply did her statesmen feel her imminent danger on the sea and resent this particular British triumph in the worldwide maritime war that they took the unusual course of sending the following circular letter to all the powers of Europe. We are advised that Louisburg capitulated to the English on July 26th, we fully recognized the consequences of such a grave event, but we shall redouble our efforts to repair their misfortune. All commercial nations ought now to open their eyes to their own interests and join us in preventing the absolute tyranny which England shall soon exercise on every sea if a stop be not put to her boundless avarice and ambition. For a century past the powers of Europe have been crying out against France for disturbing the balance of power on the continent, but while England was artfully fomenting this trouble she was herself engaged in upsetting that balance of power at sea without which these different nations independent power on land cannot subsist. All governments ought to give their immediate and most serious attention to this subject, as the English now threatened to usurp the whole world's sea-born commerce for themselves. While the French were taken up with unavailing protests and regrets the British were rejoicing with their whole heart. Their loss had been small, only a twentieth of their naval and military total had been killed or wounded or had died from sickness during the seven weeks siege. Their gain had been great, the one real fortress in America, the last sea-linked between old France and new, the single sword held over their trans-Atlantic shipping was now unchallengeably theirs. The good news traveled fast. Within three weeks of the surrender the dispatches had reached England. Defeats, disasters, and exasperating fiascos had been common since the war began, but at last there was a genuine victory, British through and through, won by the army and navy together, and won over the greatest of all rivals, France. When we lost Menorca, said the London Cronkle, just a month after the surrender, a general panic fell upon the nation, but now that Lewisburg is taken our streets echo with triumph and blaze with illuminations. Loyal addresses poured in from every quarter, the king stood on the palace steps to receive the eleven captured colours, and then, attended by the whole court, went in state to the Royal Thanksgiving Service held in St Paul's Cathedral. The thanks of parliament were voted to Amherst and Boscoen. Boscoen received them in person, being a member of the House of Commons. The speaker read the address, which was couched in the usual verbiage worked up by one of the select committees employed on such occasions. But, Boscoen replied, as men of action should, with fewer words and much more force and point. Mr. Speaker, sir, I am happy to have been able to do my duty. I have no words to express my sense of the distinguished reward that has been conferred upon me by this house, nor can I thank you, sir, enough for the polite and elegant manner in which you have been pleased to convey its resolution to me. The American colonists in general rejoiced exceedingly that Lewisburg and Ollipment had been exterminated. But especially in New England, their joy was considerably tempered by the reflection that the final blow had been delivered without their aid, and that the British arms had met with a terrible reverse at Ticonderoga, where the American remesia had outnumbered the old country regulars by half as much again. Nevertheless, Boston built a stately bonfire which made a lofty and prodigious blaze, while Philadelphia, despite its parasitic Quakers, had a most elaborate display of fireworks representing England, Lewisburg, the siege, the capture, the triumph, and reflected glory generally. At the island front near Lake Champlain, where Abercrombie now went by the appropriate nickname of Mrs. Nabycrombie, the general put out orders that the breastwork should be lined with troops and to fire three rounds for joy and give thanks to God in a religious way, but the joy was more wholehearted among the little half-forgotten garrisons of Nova Scotia. At Annapolis no news arrived till well on in September, when a Boston sloop came sailing up the bay. Captain Knox, that most industrious of diarists, records the incident. Every soul was impatient, yet shy of asking. At length I called out, what news from Lewisburg, to which the master simply replied, and with some gravity. Nothing strange. This threw us all into great consternation, and some of us even turned away. But one of our soldiers called out with some warmth, damn you, pumpkin, isn't Lewisburg taken yet? The poor New England man then answered, taken, yes, above a month ago, and I have been there since, but if you haven't heard of it before, I have a good parcel of letters for you now. Instantly all hats flew off, and we made the neighboring woods resound with our cheers for almost half an hour. Halifax naturally heard the news sooner than other places, and being then as now a naval port and a garrison town, it gave full vent to its feelings. Bells peeled, bonfires blazed, salutes thundered from the fort and harbour, but all this was a mere preliminary canter. The real race came off when the victorious fleet and army returned in triumph. Land and water were then indeed alive with exultant crowds. The streets were like a fair, and a noisy one at that. Soldiers, sailors, and civilians drank standing toasts the whole night through. The commissioner of excise recorded, not without a touch of proper pride, that quite apart from all illicit wines and spirits, no less than sixty thousand gallons of good Jamaica rum were drunk in honour of the fall of Lewisburg, in higher circles where wine was commoner than spirits the toasts were honoured just as often. Governor Lawrence, fresh from Lewisburg himself, opened the new government house with a grand ball, and Wolf, whom all now thought the coming men, drank healths, sang songs, and danced with pretty partners to his heart's content. A Chronicle of Lewisburg, 1720-1760 by William Wood, Chapter 5 Annihilation, 1760. The new garrison of Lewisburg hated it as thoroughly as any of their predecessors, French or British. They repaired the breeches in a temporary way and ran up shelters for the winter. Interest revived with the spring, for Wolf was coming back again, this time to command an army of his own, and take Quebec. The great absorbing question was, who's for the front and who the base? Both fleet and army made their rendezvous at Lewisburg, a larger fleet and a smaller army than those of the year before. Two new toasts were going the rounds of the service. Here's to the eye of a hawk and the heart of a wolf, and here's to British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America. Of course they were standing toasts. The men who drank them already felt the presage of Pitt's great empire year of 1759. The last two weeks in May and the first in June were full of glamour in crowded stirring Lewisburg. There was Wolf's picked army of nine thousand men, with Saunders mighty fleet of fifty men of war mounting two thousand guns, comprising a quarter of the whole Royal Navy, and convoying more than two hundred transports and provision ships, all coming and going, landing, embarking, drilling, dividing, massing, every one expectant of glorious results and eager to begin. Who wouldn't be for the front at the climax of a war like this? Then came the final orders issued in Lewisburg, 1 June 1759. The troops land no more, the flat bottom boats to be hoisted in, that the ships may be ready to sail at the first signal. Second June 1759, the Admiral proposes sailing the first fair wind. On the fourth, a hundred and forty-one sail wait anchor together. All that day and the next they were assembling outside and making for the island of Scattery just beyond the point of Cape Breton, which is only ten miles north of Lewisburg. By noon on the sixth the last speck of white had melted away from the Lewisburg horizon and the men for the front were definitely parted from those left behind at the base. Great things were dared and done at the front that year, in Europe, Asia, and America. But nothing was done at dull little Lewisburg except the wearisome routine of a disgustingly safe base. Rocks, bogs, fogs, sand, and scrubby bush ashore. Tantalizing news from the stirring outside world afloat. So the long blank summer days wore through. The second winter proved a little more comfortable than the first had been. But there was less, far less for the garrison to expect in the spring. In February 1760 the death warrant of Lewisburg was signed in London by Pitt and King George II. In the following summer it was executed by Captain John Byron R.N., the poet's grandfather. Sailors, sappers, and miners worked for months together, laying the pride of Lewisburg level with the dust. That they carried out their orders with grim determination any one can see today by visiting the grave in which they buried so many French ambitions. All the rest of Île Royale lost its French life in the same supreme catastrophe. The little forts and trading posts, the fishing villages and hamlets, even the farms along the Mira, which once were thought so like the promise of a second French Acadia. Nothing remains of that dead past anywhere inland except a few gnarled weather-been stumps of carefully transplanted plum and apple trees, with here and there a straggling little patch of pale forlorn narcissus now soothing the alien air in vain, round, shapeless ruins, as absolute and lone as those of Lewisburg itself. End of Chapter 5 Biographical note. There is no complete naval and military history of Lewisburg in either French or English. The first siege is a prominent feature in all histories of Canada, New England, and the United States. Though it is not much noticed in works written in the mother country, the second siege is noticed everywhere. The beginning and end of the story is generally ignored, and the naval side is always inadequately treated. Parkman gives a good account of the first siege in a half-century of conflict, and a less good account of the second in Mont-Colm and Wolfe. Kingsford's accounts are in volumes three and four of the history of Canada. Sir John Burano, a native of the island, wrote a most painstaking work on Cape Breton and its memorials of the French regime, which was first published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for 1891. Garneau and other French-Canadian historians naturally emphasize a different set of facts and explanations. An astonishingly outspoken account of the first siege is given in the anonymous Lettre d'Alnabitant de Louisbourg, which has been edited with a translation by Professor Rong. The gist of many accounts is to be found unpretentiously put together in The Last Siege of Lewisburg by C. O. Macdonald. New England produced many contemporary and subsequent accounts of the first siege, and all books concerned with the conquest give accounts of the second. Those who wish to go straight to original sources will find useful bibliographies in the notes to Parkman's and Burano's books, as well in Justin Windsor's narrative and critical history of America. But none of these include some important items to be found either in or through the Dominion Archives at Ottawa, the Public Records Office in London, and the Archive de la Marine in Paris.