Chapter 5

Louisbourg And Boston

For thirty years England and France now remained at peace, and England had many reasons for desiring peace to continue. Anne, the last of the Stuart rulers, died in 1714. The new King, George I, Elector of Hanover, was a German and a German unchangeable, for he was already fifty-four, with little knowledge of England and none of the English, and with an undying love for the dear despotic ways easily followed in a small German principality. He and his successor George II were thinking eternally of German rather than of English problems, and with German interests chiefly regarded it was well that England should make a friend of France. It was well, too, that under a new dynasty, with its title disputed, England should not encourage France to continue the friendly policy of Louis XIV towards James, the deposed Stuart Pretender. England had just made a new, determined, and arrogant enemy by forcing upon Spain the deep humiliation of ceding Gibraltar, which had been taken in 1704 by Admiral Rooke with allied forces. The proudest monarchy in Europe was compelled to see a spot of its own sacred territory held permanently by a rival nation. Gibraltar Spain was determined to recover. Its loss drove her into the arms of the enemies of England and remains to this day a grievance which on occasion Spanish politicians know well how to make useful.

Great Britain was now under the direction of a leader whose policy was peace. A nation is happy when a born statesman with a truly liberal mind and a genuine love of his country comes to the front in its affairs. Such a man was Sir Robert Walpole. He was a Whig squire, a plain country gentleman, with enough of culture to love good pictures and the ancient classics, but delighting chiefly in sports and agriculture, hard drinking and politics. When only twenty-seven he was already a leader among the Whigs; at thirty-two he was Secretary for War; and before he was forty he had become Prime Minister, a post which he really created and was the first Englishman to hold. Friendship with France marked a new phase of British policy. Walpole's baffled enemies said that he was bribed by France. His shrewd insight kept France lukewarm in its support of the Stuart rising in 1715, which he punished with great severity. But it was as a master of finance that he was strongest. While continental nations were wasting men and money Walpole gloried in saving English lives and English gold. He found new and fruitful modes of taxation, but when urged to tax the colonies he preferred, as he said, to leave that to a bolder man. It is a pity that any one was ever found bold enough to do it.

Walpole's policy endured for a quarter of a century. He abandoned it only after a bitter struggle in which he was attacked as sacrificing the national honor for the sake of peace. Spain was an easy mark for those who wished to arouse the warlike spirit. She still persecuted and burned heretics, a great cause of offense in Protestant Britain, and she was rigorous in excluding foreigners from trading with her colonies. To be the one exception in this policy of exclusion was the privilege enjoyed by Britain. When the fortunes of Spain were low in 1713, she had been forced not merely to cede Gibraltar but also to give to the British the monopoly of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves and the right to send one ship a year to trade at Porto Bello in South America. It seems a sufficiently ignoble bargain for a great nation to exact: the monopoly of carrying and selling cargoes of black men and the right to send a single ship yearly to a Spanish colony. We can hardly imagine grave diplomats of our day haggling over such terms. But the eighteenth century was not the twentieth. From the treaty the British expected amazing results. The South Sea Company was formed to carry on a vast trade with South America. One ship a year could, of course, carry little, but the ships laden with negroes could smuggle into the colonies merchandise and the one trading ship could be and was reloaded fraudulently from lighters so that its cargo was multiplied manyfold. Out of the belief in huge profits from this trade with its exaggerated visions of profit grew in 1720 the famous South Sea Bubble which inaugurated a period of frantic speculation in England. Worthless shares in companies formed for trade in the South Seas sold at a thousand per cent of their face value. It is a form of madness to which human greed is ever liable. Walpole's financial insight condemned from the first the wild outburst, and his common sense during the crisis helped to stem the tide of disaster. The South Sea Bubble burst partly because Spain stood sternly on her own rights and punished British smugglers. During many years the tension between the two nations grew. No doubt Spanish officials were harsh. Tales were repeated in England of their brutalities to British sailors who fell into their hands. In 1739 the story of a certain Captain Jenkins that his ear had been cut off by Spanish captors and thrown in his face with an insulting message to his government brought matters to a climax. Events in other parts of Europe soon made the war general. When, in 1740, the young King of Prussia, Frederick II, came to the throne, his first act was to march an army into Silesia. To this province he had, he said, in the male line, a better claim than that of the woman, Maria Theresa, who had just inherited the Austrian crown. Frederick conquered Silesia and held it. In 1744 he was allied with Spain and France, while Britain allied herself with Austria, and thus Britain and France were again at war.

In America both sides had long seen that the war was inevitable. Never had French opinion been more arrogant in asserting France's right to North America than after the Treaty of Utrecht. At the dinner-table of the Governor in Quebec there was incessant talk of Britain's incapacity, of the sheer luck by which she had blundered into the occupation of great areas, while in truth she was weak through lack of union and organization. A natural antipathy, it was said, existed between her colonies and herself; she was a monarchy while they were really independent republics. France, on the other hand, had grown stronger since the last war. In 1713 she had retained the island of Cape Breton and now she had made it a new menace to British power. Boston, which had breathed more freely after the fall of Port Royal in 1710, soon had renewed cause for alarm in regard to its shipping. On the southern coast of Cape Breton, there was a spacious harbor with a narrow entrance easily fortified, and here France began to build the fortress of Louisbourg. It was planned on the most approved military principles of the time. Through its strength, the boastful talk went, France should master North America. The King sent out cannon, undertook to build a hospital, to furnish chaplains for the service of the Church, to help education, and so on. Above all, he sent to Louisbourg soldiers.

Reports of these wonderful things reached the English colonies and caused fears and misgivings. New England believed that Louisbourg reflected the pomp and wealth of Versailles. The fortress was, in truth, slow in building and never more than a rather desolate outpost of France. It contained in all about four thousand people. During the thirty years of the long truce it became so strong that it was without a rival on the Atlantic coast. The excellent harbor was a haven for the fishermen of adjacent waters and a base for French privateers, who were a terror to all the near trade routes of the Atlantic. On the military side Louisbourg seemed a success. But the French failed in their effort to colonize the island of Cape Breton on which the fortress stood. Today this island has great iron and other industries. There are coal-mines ear Louisbourg; and its harbor, long deserted after the fall of the power of France, has now an extensive commerce. The island was indeed fabulously rich in coals and minerals. To use these things, however, was to be the task of a new age of industry. The colonist of the eighteenth century--a merchant, a farmer, or a fur trader--thought that Cape Breton was bleak and infertile and refused to settle there. Louisbourg remained a compact fortress with a good harbor, free from ice during most of the year, but too much haunted by fog. It looked out on a much-traveled sea. But it remained set in the wilderness.

Even if Louisbourg made up for the loss of Port Royal, this did not, however, console France for the cession of Acadia. The fixed idea of those who shaped the policy of Canada was to recover Acadia and meanwhile to keep its French settlers loyal to France. The Acadians were not a promising people with whom to work. In Acadia, or Nova Scotia, as the English called it, these backward people had slowly gathered during a hundred years and had remained remote and neglected. They had cleared farms, built primitive houses, planted orchards, and reared cattle. In 1713 their number did not exceed two or three thousand, but already they were showing the amazing fertility of the French race in America. They were prosperous but ignorant. Almost none of them could read. After the cession of their land to Britain in 1713 they had been guaranteed by treaty the free exercise of their religion and they were Catholics to a man. It seems as if history need hardly mention a people so feeble and obscure. Circumstances, however, made the rôle of the Acadians important. Their position was unique. The Treaty of Utrecht gave them the right to leave Acadia within a year, taking with them their personal effects. To this Queen Anne added the just privilege of selling their lands and houses. Neither the Acadians themselves, however, nor their new British masters were desirous that they should leave. The Acadians were content in their old homes; and the British did not wish them to help in building up the neighboring French stronghold on Cape Breton. It thus happened that the French officials could induce few of the Acadians to migrate and the English troubled them little. Having been resolute in acquiring Nova Scotia, Britain proceeded straightway to neglect it. She brought in few settlers. She kept there less than two hundred soldiers and even to these she paid so little attention that sometimes they had no uniforms. The Acadians prospered, multiplied, and quarreled as to the boundaries of their lands. They rendered no military service, paid no taxes, and had the country to themselves as completely as if there had been no British conquest. They rarely saw a British official. If they asked the British Governor at Annapolis to settle for them some vexed question of rights or ownership he did so and they did not even pay a fee.

This is not, however, the whole story. England's neglect of the colony was France's opportunity. Perhaps the French court did not follow closely what was going on in Acadia. The successive French Governors of Canada at Quebec were, however, alert; and their policy was to incite the Abenaki Indians on the New England frontier to harass the English settlements, and to keep the Acadians an active factor in the support of French plans. The nature of French intrigue is best seen in the career of Sebastien Rale. He was a highly educated Jesuit priest. It was long a tradition among the Jesuits to send some of their best men as missionaries among the Indians. Rale spent nearly the whole of his life with the Abenakis at the mission station of Norridgewock on the Kennebec River. He knew the language and the customs of the Indians, attended their councils, and dominated them by his influence. He was a model missionary, earnest and scholarly. But the Jesuit of that age was prone to be half spiritual zealot, half political intriguer. There is no doubt that the Indians had a genuine fear that the English, with danger from France apparently removed by the Treaty of Utrecht, would press claims to lands about the Kennebec River in what is now the State of Maine, and that they would ignore the claims of the Indians and drive them out. The Governor at Quebec helped to arouse the savages against the arrogant intruders. English border ruffians stirred the Indians by their drunken outrages and gave them real cause for anger. The savages knew only one way of expressing political unrest. They began murdering women and children in raids on lonely log cabins on the frontier. The inevitable result was that in 1721 Massachusetts began a war on them which dragged on for years. Rale, inspired from Quebec, was believed to control the Indians and, indeed, boasted that he did so. At last the English struck at the heart of the trouble. In 1724 some two hundred determined men made a silent advance through the forest to the mission village of Norridgewock where Rale lived, and Rale died fighting the assailants. In Europe a French Jesuit such as he would have worked among diplomats and at the luxurious courts of kings. In America he worked among savages under the hard conditions of frontier life. The methods and the aims in both cases were the same--by subtle and secret influence so to mold the actions of men that France should be exalted in power. In their high politics the French sometimes overreached themselves. To seize points of vantage, to intrigue for influence, are not in themselves creative. They must be supported by such practical efforts as will assure an economic reserve adequate in the hour of testing. France failed partly because she did not know how to lay sound industrial foundations which should give substance to the brilliant planning of her leaders.

To French influence of this kind the English opposed forces that were the outcome of their national character and institutions. They were keener traders than the French and had cheaper and better goods, with the exception perhaps of French gunpowder and of French brandy, which the Indians preferred to English rum. Though the English were less alert and less brilliant than the French, the work that they did was more enduring. Their settlements encroached ever more and more upon the forest. They found and tilled the good lands, traded and saved and gradually built up populous communities. The British colonies had twenty times the population of Canada. The tide of their power crept in slowly but it moved with the relentless force that has subsequently made nearly the whole of North America English in speech and modes of thought.

When, in 1744, open war between the two nations came at last in Europe, each prepared to spring at the other in America--and France sprang first. In Nova Scotia, on the narrow strait which separates the mainland from the island of Cape Breton, the British had a weak little fishing settlement called Canseau. Suddenly in May, 1744, when the British at Canseau had heard nothing of war, two armed vessels from Louisbourg with six or seven hundred soldiers and sailors appeared before the poor little place and demanded its surrender. To this the eighty British defenders agreed on the condition that they should be sent to Boston which, as yet, had not heard of the war. Meanwhile they were taken to Louisbourg where they kept their eyes open. But the French continued in their offensive. The one vital place held by the British in Nova Scotia was Annapolis, at that time so neglected that the sandy ramparts had crumbled into the ditch supposed to protect them, and cows from the neighboring fields walked up the slope and looked down into the fort. It was Duvivier, the captor of Canseau, who attacked Annapolis. He had hoped much for help from the Indians and the Acadians, but, though both seemed eager, both failed him in action. Paul Mascarene, who defended Annapolis, was of Huguenot blood, which stimulated him to fight the better against the Catholic French. Boston sent him help, for that little capital was deeply moved, and so Annapolis did not fall, though it was harassed during the whole summer of 1744; and New England, in a fever at the new perils of war, prepared a mighty stroke against the French.

This expedition was to undertake nothing less than the capture of Louisbourg itself. The colonial troops had been so often reminded of their inferiority to regular troops as fighting forces that, with provincial docility, they had almost come to accept the estimate. It was well enough for them to fight irregular French and Indian bands, but to attack a fortress defended by a French garrison was something that only a few bold spirits among them could imagine. Such a spirit, however, was William Vaughan, a Maine trader, deeply involved in the fishing industry and confronted with ruin from hostile Louisbourg. Shirley, the Governor of Massachusetts, a man of eager ambition, took up the proposal and worked out an elaborate plan. The prisoners who had been captured at Canseau by the French and interned at Louisbourg now arrived at Boston and told of bad conditions in the fortress. In January, 1745, Shirley called a session of the General Court, the little parliament of Massachusetts, and, having taken the unusual step of pledging the members to secrecy, he unfolded his plan. But it proved too bold for the prudent legislators, and they voted it down. Meanwhile New England trade was suffering from ships which used Louisbourg as a base. At length public opinion was aroused and, when Shirley again called the General Court, a bare majority endorsed his plan. Soon thereafter New England was aflame. Appeals for help were sent to England and, it is said, even to Jamaica. Shirley counted on aid from a British squadron, under Commodore Peter Warren, in American waters, but at first Warren had no instructions to help such a plan. This disappointment did not keep New England from going on alone. In the end Warren received instructions to give the necessary substantial aid, and he established a strict blockade which played a vital part in the siege of the French fortress.

In this hour of deadly peril Louisbourg was in not quite happy case. Some of the French officers, who would otherwise have starved on their low pay, were taking part in illicit trade and were neglecting their duties. Just after Christmas in 1744, there had been a mutiny over a petty question of butter and bacon. Here, as in all French colonies, there were cliques, with the suspicions and bitterness which they involve. The Governor Duchambon, though brave enough, was a man of poor judgment in a position that required both tact and talent. The English did not make the mistake of delaying their preparations. They were indeed so prompt that they arrived at Canseau early in April and had to wait for the ice to break up in Gabarus Bay, near Louisbourg, where they intended to land. Here, on April 30, the great fleet appeared. A watcher in Louisbourg counted ninety-six ships standing off shore. With little opposition from the French the amazing army landed at Freshwater Cove.

Then began an astonishing siege. The commander of the New England forces, William Pepperrell, was a Maine trader, who dealt in a little of everything, fish, groceries, lumber, ships, land. Though innocent of military science, he was firm and tactful. A British officer with strict military ideas could not, perhaps, have led that strange army with success. Pepperrell knew that he had good fighting material; he knew, too, how to handle it. In his army of some four thousand men there was probably not one officer with a regular training. Few of his force had proper equipment, but nearly all his men were handy on a ship as well as on land. In Louisbourg were about two thousand defenders, of whom only five or six hundred were French regulars. These professional soldiers watched with contempt not untouched with apprehension the breaches of military precedent in the operations of the besiegers. Men harnessed like horses dragged guns through morasses into position, exposed themselves recklessly, and showed the skill, initiative, and resolution which we have now come to consider the dominant qualities of the Yankee. In time Warren arrived with a British squadron and then the French were puzzled anew. They could not understand the relations between the fleet and the army, which seemed to them to belong to different nations. The New Englanders appeared to be under a Governor who was something like an independent monarch. He had drawn up elaborate plans for his army, comical in their apparent disregard of the realities of war, naming the hour when the force should land "unobserved" before Louisbourg, instructing Pepperrell to surprise that place while every one was asleep, and so on. Kindly Providence was expected even to give continuous good weather. "The English appear to have enlisted Heaven in their interests," said a despairing resident of the town; "so long as the expedition lasted they had the most beautiful weather in the world." There were no storms; the winds were favorable; fog, so common on that coast, did not creep in; and the sky was clear.

Among the French the opinion prevailed that the English colonists were ferocious pirates plotting eternally to destroy the power of France. Their liberty, however, it was well understood, had made them strong; and now they quickly became formidable soldiers. Their shooting, bad at first, was, in the end, superb. Sometimes in their excess of zeal they overcharged their cannon so that the guns burst. But they managed to hit practically every house in Louisbourg, and since most of the houses were of wood there was constant danger of fire. Some of the French fought well. Even children of ten and twelve helped to carry ammunition.

The Governor Duchambon tried to keep up the spirits of the garrison by absurd exaggeration of British losses. He was relying much on help from France, but only a single ship reached port. On May 19, 1745, the besieged saw approaching Louisbourg a great French ship of war, the Vigilant, long looked for, carrying 64 guns and 560 men. A northwest wind was blowing which would have brought her quickly into the harbor. The British fleet was two and a half leagues away to leeward. The great ship, thinking herself secure, did not even stop to communicate with Louisbourg but wantonly gave chase to a small British privateer which she encountered near the shore. By skillful maneuvering the smaller ship led the French frigate out to sea again, and then the British squadron came up. From five o'clock to ten in the evening anxious men in Louisbourg watched the fight and saw at last the Vigilant surrender after losing eighty men. This disaster broke the spirit of the defenders, who were already short of ammunition. When they knew that the British were preparing for a combined assault by land and sea, they made terms and surrendered on the 17th of June, after the siege had lasted for seven weeks. The garrison marched out with the honors of war, to be transported to France, together with such of the civilian population as wished to go.

The British squadron then sailed into the harbor. Pepperrell's strange army, ragged and war-worn after the long siege, entered the town by the south gate. They had fought as crusaders, for to many of them Catholic Louisbourg was a stronghold of Satan. Whitfield, the great English evangelist, then in New England, had given them a motto--Nil desperandum Christo duce. There is a story that one of the English chaplains, old Parson Moody, a man of about seventy, had brought with him from Boston an axe and was soon found using it to hew down the altar and images in the church at Louisbourg. If the story is true, it does something to explain the belief of the French in the savagery of their opponents who would so treat things which their enemies held to be most sacred. The French had met this fanaticism with a savagery equally intense and directed not against things but against the flesh of men. An inhabitant of Louisbourg during the siege describes the dauntless bravery of the Indian allies of the French during the siege: "Full of hatred for the English whose ferocity they abhor, they destroy all upon whom they can lay hands." He does not have even a word of censure for the savages who tortured and killed in cold blood a party of some twenty English who had been induced to surrender on promise of life. The French declared that not they but the savages were responsible for such barbarities, and the English retorted that the French must control their allies. Feeling on such things was naturally bitter on both sides and did much to decide that the war between the two nations should be to the death.

The fall of Louisbourg brought great exultation to the English colonies. It was a unique event, the first prolonged and successful siege that had as yet taken place north of Mexico. An odd chance of war had decreed that untrained soldiers should win a success so prodigious. New England, it is true, had incurred a heavy expenditure, and her men, having done so much, naturally imagined that they had done everything, and talked as if the siege was wholly their triumph. They were, of course, greatly aided by the fleet under Warren, and the achievement was a joint triumph of army and navy. New England alone, however, had the credit of conceiving and of arousing others to carry out a brilliant exploit.

Victory inspires to further victory. The British, exultant after Louisbourg, were resolved to make an end of French power in America. "Delenda est Canada!" cried Governor Shirley to the General Court of Massachusetts, and the response of the members was the voting of men and money on a scale that involved the bankruptcy of the Commonwealth. Other colonies, too, were eager for a cause which had won a success so dazzling, and some eight thousand men were promised for an attack on Canada, proud and valiant Massachusetts contributing nearly one-half of the total number. The old plan was to be followed. New York was to lead in an attack by way of Lake Champlain. New England was to collect its forces at Louisbourg. Here a British fleet should come, carrying eight battalions of British regulars, and, with Warren in command, the whole armada should proceed to Quebec. Nothing came of this elaborate scheme. Neither the promised troops nor the fleet arrived from England. British ministers broke faith with the colonists in the adventure with quite too light a heart.

Stories went abroad of disorder and dissension in Louisbourg under the English and of the weakness of the place. Disease broke out. Hundreds of New England soldiers died and their bones now lie in graves, unmarked and forgotten, on the seashore by the deserted fortress; at almost any time still their bones, washed down by the waves, may be picked up on the beach. There were sullen mutterings of discontent at Louisbourg. Soldiers grumbled over grievances which were sometimes fantastic. Rumor had been persistent in creating a legend that vast wealth, the accumulated plunder brought in by French privateers, was stored in the town. From this source a rich reward in booty was expected by the soldiers. In fact, when Louisbourg was taken, all looting was forbidden and the soldiers were put on guard over houses which they had hoped to rob. For the soldiers there were no prizes. Louisbourg was poor. The sailors, on the other hand, were fortunate. As a decoy Warren kept the French flag flying over the harbor, and French ships sailed in, one of them with a vast treasure of gold and silver coin and ingots from Peru valued at £600,000. One other prize was valued at £200,000 and a third at £140,000. Warren's own share of prize money amounted to £60,000, while Pepperrell, the unrewarded leader of the sister service, piled up a personal debt of £10,000. Quarrels occurred between soldiers and sailors, and in these the New Englanders soon proved by no means the cowards which complacent superiority in England considered them; rather, as an enlightened Briton said, "If they had pickaxe and spade they would dig a way to Hell itself and storm that stronghold."

Behind all difficulties was the question whether, having taken Louisbourg, the British could continue to hold it. France answered with a resolute "No." To retake it she fitted out a great fleet. Nearly half her navy gathered under the Duc d'Anville and put to sea on June 20, 1746. If in the previous summer God had helped the English with good weather, by a similar proof His face now appeared turned a second time against the French. In the great array there were more than sixty ships, which were to gather at Chebucto, now Halifax, harbor, and to be joined there by four great ships of war from the West Indies. Everything went wrong. On the voyage across the Atlantic there was a prolonged calm, followed by a heavy squall. Several ships were struck by lightning. A magazine on the Mars blew up, killing ten and wounding twenty-one men. Pestilence broke out. As a crowning misfortune, the fleet was scattered by a terrific storm. After great delay d'Anville's ship reached Chebucto, then a wild and lonely spot. The expected fleet from the West Indies had indeed come, but had gone, since the ships from France, long overdue, had not arrived. D'Anville died suddenly--some said of apoplexy, others of poison self-administered. More ships arrived full of sick men and short of provisions. D'Estournel, who succeeded d'Anville in chief command, in despair at the outlook killed himself with his own sword after the experience of only a day or two in his post. La Jonquière, a competent officer, afterwards Governor of Canada, then led the expedition. The pestilence still raged, and from two to three thousand men died. One day a Boston sloop boldly entered Chebucto harbor to find out what was going on. It is a wonder that the British did not descend upon the stricken French and destroy them. In October, La Jonquière, having pulled his force together, planned to win the small success of taking Annapolis, but again storms scattered his ships. At the end of October he finally decided to return to France. But there were more heavy storms; and one French crew was so near starvation that only a chance meeting with a Portuguese ship kept them from killing and eating five English prisoners. Only a battered remnant of the fleet eventually reached home ports.

The disaster did not crush France. In May of the next spring, 1747, a new fleet under La Jonquière set out to retake Louisbourg. Near the coast of Europe, however, Admirals Anson and Warren met and completely destroyed it, taking prisoner La Jonquière himself. This disaster effected what was really the most important result of the war: it made the British fleet definitely superior to the French. During the struggle England had produced a new Drake, who attacked Spain in the spirit of the sea-dogs of Elizabeth. Anson had gone in 1740 into the Pacific, where he seized and plundered Spanish ships as Drake had done nearly two centuries earlier; and in 1744, when he had been given up for lost, he completed the great exploit of sailing round the world and bringing home rich booty. Such feats went far to give Britain that command of the sea on which her colonial Empire was to depend.

The issue of the war hung more on events that occurred in Europe than in America, and France had made gains as well as suffered losses. It was on the sea that she had sustained her chief defeats. In India she had gained by taking the English factory at Madras; and in the Low Countries she was still aggressive. Indeed, during the war England had been more hostile to Spain than to France. She had not taken very seriously her support of the colonies in their attack on Louisbourg and she had failed them utterly in their designs on Canada. It is true that in Europe England had grave problems to solve. Austria, with which she was allied, desired her to fight until Frederick of Prussia should give up the province of Silesia seized by him in 1740. In this quarrel England had no vital interest. France had occupied the Austrian Netherlands and had refused to hand back to Austria this territory unless she received Cape Breton in return. Britain might have kept Cape Breton if she would have allowed France to keep Belgium. This, in loyalty to Austria, she would not do. Accordingly peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 on the agreement that each side should restore to the other its conquests, not merely in Europe but also in America and Asia. Thus it happened that the British flag went up again at Madras while it came down at Louisbourg.

Boston was of course angry at the terms of the treaty. What sacrifices had Massachusetts not made! The least of them was the great burden of debt which she had piled up. Her sons had borne what Pepperrell called "almost incredible hardships." They had landed cannon on a lee shore when the great waves pounded to pieces their boats and when men wading breast high were crushed by the weight of iron. Harnessed two and three hundred to a gun, they had dragged the pieces one after the other over rocks and through bog and slime, and had then served them in the open under the fire of the enemy. New Englanders had died like "rotten sheep" in Louisbourg. The graves of nearly a thousand of them lay on the bleak point outside the wall. What they had gained by this sacrifice must now be abandoned. A spirit of discontent with the mother country went abroad and, after this sacrifice of colonial interests, never wholly died out. It is not without interest to note in passing that Gridley, the engineer who drew the plan of the defenses of Louisbourg, thirty years later drew those of Bunker Hill to protect men of the English race who fought against England.

Every one knew that the peace of 1748 was only a truce and Britain began promptly new defenses. Into the spacious harbor of Chebucto, which three years earlier had been the scene of the sorrows of d'Anville's fleet, there sailed in June, 1749, a considerable British squadron bent on a momentous errand. It carried some thousands of settlers, Edward Cornwallis, a governor clothed with adequate authority, and a force sufficient for the defense of the new foundation. Cornwallis was delighted with the prospect. "All the officers agree the harbour is the finest they have ever seen"--this, of Halifax harbor with the great Bedford Basin, opening beyond it, spacious enough to contain the fleets of the world. "The Country is one continuous Wood, no clear spot to be seen or heard of. D'Anville's fleet ... cleared no ground; they encamped their men on the beach." The garrison was withdrawn from Louisbourg and soon arrived at Halifax, with a vast quantity of stores. A town was marked out; lots were drawn for sites; and every one knew where he might build his house. There were prodigious digging, chopping, hammering. "I shall be able to get them all Houses before winter," wrote Cornwallis cheerily. Firm military discipline, indeed, did wonders. Before winter came, a town had been created, and with the town a fortress which from that time has remained the chief naval and military stronghold of Great Britain in North America. At Louisbourg some two hundred miles farther east on the coast, France could reëstablish her military strength, but now Louisbourg had a rival and each was resolved to yield nothing to the other. The founding of Halifax was in truth the symbol of the renewal of the struggle for a continent.