France Loses Acadia
ThePeace of Ryswick in 1697 had settled nothing finally. France was still strong enough to aim at the mastery of Europe and America. England was torn by internal faction and would not prepare to face her menacing enemy. Always the English have disliked a great standing army. Now, despite the entreaties of a king who knew the real danger, they reduced the army to the pitiable number of seven thousand men. Louis XIV grew ever more confident. In 1700 he was able to put his own grandson on the throne of Spain and to dominate Europe from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Netherlands. Another event showing his resolve soon startled the world. In 1701 died James II, the dethroned King of England, and Louis went out of his way to insult the English people. William III was King by the will of Parliament. Louis had recognized him as such.Yet, on the death of James, Louis declared that James’s son was now the true King of England. This impudent defiance meant, and Louis intended that it should mean, renewed war. England had invited it by making her forces weak. William III died in 1702 and the war went on under his successor, Queen Anne.
Thus it happened that once more war-parties began to prowl on the Canadian frontier, and women and children in remote clearings in the forest shivered at the prospect of the savage scourge. The English colonies suffered terribly. Everywhere France was aggressive. The warlike Iroquois were now so alarmed by the French menace that, to secure protection, they ceded their territory to Queen Anne and became British subjects, a humiliating step indeed for a people who had once thought themselves the most important in all the world. By 1703 the butchery on the frontier was in full operation. The Jesuit historian Charlevoix, with complacent exaggeration, says that in that year alone three hundred men were killed on the New England frontier by the Abenaki Indians incited by the French. The numbers slain were in fact fewer and the slain were not always men but sometimes old women andyoung babies. The policy of France was to make the war so ruthless that a gulf of hatred should keep their Indian allies from ever making friends and resuming trade with the English, whose hatchets, blankets, and other supplies were, as the French well knew, better and cheaper than their own. The French hoped to seize Boston, to destroy its industries and sink its ships, then to advance beyond Boston and deal out to other places the same fate. The rivalry of New England was to be ended by making that region a desert.
The first fury of the war raged on the frontier of Maine, which was an outpost of Massachusetts. On an August day in 1703 the people of the rugged little settlement of Wells were at their usual tasks when they heard gunshots and war-whoops. Indians had crept up to attack the place. They set the village on fire and killed or carried off some twoscore prisoners, chiefly women and children. The village of Deerfield, on the northwestern frontier of Massachusetts, consisted of a wooden meeting-house and a number of rough cabins which lodged the two or three hundred inhabitants. On a February night in 1704 savages led by a young member of the Canadiannoblesse, Hertelde Rouville, approached the village silently on snowshoes, waited on the outskirts during the dead of night, and then just before dawn burst in upon the sleeping people. The work was done quickly. Within an hour after dawn the place had been plundered and set on fire, forty or fifty dead bodies of men and women and children lay in the village, and a hundred and eleven miserable prisoners were following their captors on snowshoes through the forest, each prisoner well knowing that to fall by the way meant to have his head split by a tomahawk and the scalp torn off. When on the first night one of them slipped away, Rouville told the others that, should a further escape occur, he would burn alive all those remaining in his hands. The minister of the church at Deerfield, the Reverend John Williams, was a captive, together with his wife and five children. The wife, falling by the way, was killed by a stroke of a tomahawk and the body was left lying on the snow. The children were taken from their father and scattered among different bands. After a tramp of two hundred miles through the wilderness to the outlying Canadian settlements, the minister in the end reached Quebec. Every effort was made, even by his Indian guard, to make him accept theRoman Catholic faith, but the stern Puritan was obdurate. His daughter, Eunice, on the other hand, caught young, became a Catholic so devoted that later she would not return to New England lest the contact with Protestants should injure her faith. She married a Caughnawaga Indian and became to all outward appearance a squaw. Williams himself lived to resume his career in New England and to write the story of the raid at Deerfield.
It may be that there were men in New England and New York capable of similar barbarities. It is true that the savage allies of the English, when at their worst, knew no restraint. There is nothing in the French raids on a scale as great as that of the murderous raid by the Iroquois on the French village of Lachine. But the Puritans of New England, while they were ready to hew down savages, did not like and rarely took part in the massacre of Europeans.
As the outrages went on year after year the temper of New England towards the savages grew more ruthless. The General Court, the Legislature of Massachusetts, offered forty pounds for every Indian scalp brought in. Indians, like wolves, were vermin to be destroyed. The angerof New England was further kindled by what was happening on the sea. Privateers from Port Royal, in Acadia, attacked New England commerce and New England fishermen and made unsafe the approaches to Boston. This was to touch a commercial community on its most tender spot; and a deep resolve was formed that Canada should be conquered and the menace ended once for all.
It was only an occasional spirit in Massachusetts who made comprehensive political plans. One of these was Samuel Vetch, a man somewhat different from the usual type of New England leader, for he was not of English but of Scottish origin, of the Covenanter strain. Vetch, himself an adventurous trader, had taken a leading part in the ill-fated Scottish attempt to found on the Isthmus of Panama a colony, which, in easy touch with both the Pacific and the Atlantic, should carry on a gigantic commerce between the East and the West. The colony failed, chiefly, perhaps, because Spain would not have this intrusion into territory which she claimed. Tropical disease and the disunion and incompetence of the colonists themselves were Spain’s allies in the destruction. After this, Vetch had found his way to Boston, where he soon became prominent. In 1707 Scotland andEngland were united under one Parliament, and the active mind of Vetch was occupied with something greater than a Scottish colony at Panama. Queen Anne, Vetch was resolved, should be “Sole Empress of the vast North American Continent.” Massachusetts was ready for just such a cry. The General Court took up eagerly the plan of Vetch. The scheme required help from England and the other colonies. To England Vetch went in 1708. Marlborough had just won the great victory of Oudenarde. It was good, the English ministry thought, to hit France wherever she raised her head. In the spring of 1709 Vetch returned to Boston with promises of powerful help at once for an attack on Canada, and with the further promise that, the victory won, he himself should be the first British Governor of Canada. New York was to help with nine hundred men. Other remoter colonies were to aid on a smaller scale. These contingents were to attack Canada by way of Lake Champlain. Twelve hundred men from New England were to join the regulars from England and go against Quebec by way of the sea and master Canada once for all.
The plan was similar to the one which Amherst and Wolfe carried to success exactly fifty yearslater, and with a Wolfe in command it might now have succeeded. The troops from England were to be at Boston before the end of May, 1709. The colonial forces gathered. New Jersey and Pennsylvania refused, indeed, to send any soldiers; but New York and the other colonies concerned did their full share. By the early summer Colonel Francis Nicholson, with some fifteen hundred men, lay fully equipped in camp on Wood Creek near Lake Champlain, ready to descend on Montreal as soon as news came of the arrival of the British fleet at Boston for the attack on Quebec. On the shores of Boston harbor lay another colonial army, large for the time—the levies from New England which were to sail to Quebec. Officers had come out from England to drill these hardy men, and as soldiers they were giving a good account of themselves. They watched, fasted, and prayed, and watched again for the fleet from England. Summer came and then autumn and still the fleet did not arrive. Far away, in the crowded camp on Wood Creek, pestilence broke out and as time wore on this army slowly melted away either by death or withdrawal. At last, on October 11, 1709, word came from the British ministry, dated the 27th of July, two months after the promisedfleet was to arrive at Boston, that it had been sent instead to Portugal.
In spite of this disappointment the resolution endured to conquer Canada. New York joined New England in sending deputations to London to ask again for help. Four Mohawk chiefs went with Peter Schuyler from New York and were the wonder of the day in London. It is something to have a plan talked about. Malplaquet, the last of Marlborough’s great victories, had been won in the autumn of 1709 and the thought of a new enterprise was popular. Nicholson, who had been sent from Boston, urged that the first step should be to take Port Royal. What the colonies required for this expedition was the aid of four frigates and five hundred soldiers who should reach Boston by March.
The help arrived, though not in March but in July, 1710. Boston was filled with enthusiasm for the enterprise. The legislature made military service compulsory, quartered soldiers in private houses without consent of the owners, impressed sailors, and altogether was quite arbitrary and high-handed. The people, however, would bear almost anything if only they could crush Port Royal, the den of privateers who seized many NewEngland vessels. On the 18th of September, to the great joy of Boston, the frigates and the transports sailed away, with Nicholson in command of the troops and Vetch as adjutant-general.
What we know today as Digby Basin on the east side of the Bay of Fundy, is a great harbor, landlocked but for a narrow entrance about a mile wide. Through this “gut,” as it is called, the tide rushes in a torrential and dangerous stream, but soon loses its violence in the spacious and quiet harbor. Here the French had made their first enduring colony in America. On the shores of the beautiful basin thefleurs-de-lishad been raised over a French fort as early as 1605. A lovely valley opens from the head of the basin to the interior. It is now known as the Annapolis Valley, a fertile region dotted by the homesteads of a happy and contented people. These people, however, are not French in race nor do they live under a French Government. When on the 24th of September, 1710, the fleet from Boston entered the basin, and in doing so lost a ship and more than a score of men through the destructive current, the decisive moment had come for all that region. Fate had decreed that the land should not remain French but should become English.
Port Royal was at that time a typical French community of the New World. The village consisted of some poor houses made of logs or planks, a wooden church, and, lying apart, a fort defended by earthworks. The Governor, Subercase, was a brave French officer. He ruled the little community with a despotism tempered only by indignant protests to the King from those whom he ruled when his views and theirs did not coincide. The peasants in the village counted for nothing. Connected with the small garrison there were ladies and gentlemen who had no light opinion of their own importance and were so peppery that Subercase wished he had a madhouse in which to confine some of them. He thought well of the country. It produced, he said, everything that France produced except olives. The fertile land promised abundance of grain and there was an inexhaustible supply of timber. There were many excellent harbors. Had he a millionlivres, he would, he said, invest it gladly in the country and be certain of a good return. His enthusiasm had produced, however, no answering enthusiasm at Versailles, for there the interests of Port Royal were miserably neglected. Yet it was a thorn in the flesh of the English. In 1708 privateers fromPort Royal had destroyed no less than thirty-five English vessels, chiefly from Boston, and had carried to the fort four hundred and seventy prisoners. Even in winter months French ships would flit out of Port Royal and bring in richly laden prizes. Can we wonder at Boston’s deep resolve that now at last the pest should end!
It was an imposing force which sailed into the basin. The four frigates and thirty transports carried an army far greater than Subercase had thought possible. The English landed some fourteen hundred men. Subercase had less than three hundred. Within a few days, when the English began to throw shells into the town, he asked for terms. On the 16th of October the little garrison, neglected by France and left ragged and half-starved, marched out with drums beating and colors flying. The English, drawn up before the gate, showed the usual honors to a brave foe. The French flag was hauled down and in its place floated that of Britain. Port Royal was renamed Annapolis and Vetch was made its Governor. Three times before had the English come to Port Royal as conquerors and then gone away, but now they were to remain. Ever since that October day, when autumn was coloring the abundantfoliage of the lovely harbor, the British flag has waved over Annapolis. Because the flag waved there it was destined to wave over all Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and with Acadia in time went Canada.
A partial victory, however, such as the taking of Port Royal, was not enough for the aroused spirit of the English. They and their allies had beaten Louis XIV on the battlefields of Europe and had so worn out France that clouds and darkness were about the last days of the Grand Monarch now nearing his end. In America his agents were still drawing up papers outlining grandiose designs for mastering the continent and for proving that England’s empire was near its fall, but Europe knew that France in the long war had been beaten. The right way to smite France in America was to rely upon England’s naval power, to master the great highway of the St. Lawrence, to isolate Canada, and to strangle one by one the French settlements, beginning with Quebec.
There was malignant intrigue at the court of Queen Anne. One favorite, the Duchess of Marlborough, had just been disgraced, and another, Mrs. Masham, had been taken on by the weak and stupid Queen. The conquest of Canada, if it could be achieved without the aid of Marlborough, wouldhelp in his much desired overthrow. Petty motives were unhappily at the root of the great scheme. Who better to lead such an expedition than the brother of the new favorite whose success might discredit the husband of the old one? Accordingly General “Jack” Hill, brother of Mrs. Masham, was appointed to the chief military command and an admiral hitherto little known but of good habits and quick wit, Sir Hovenden Walker, was to lead the fleet.
The expedition against Quebec was on a scale adequate for the time. Britain dispatched seven regiments of regulars, numbering in all five thousand five hundred men, and there were besides in the fleet some thousands of sailors and marines. Never before had the English sent to North America a force so great. On June 24, 1711, Admiral Walker arrived at Boston with his great array. Boston was impressed, but Boston was also a little hurt, for the British leaders were very lofty and superior in their tone towards colonials and gave orders as if Boston were a provincial city of England which must learn respect and obedience to His Majesty’s officers “vested with the Queen’s Royal Power and Authority.”
More than seventy ships, led by ninemen-of-war, sailed from Boston for the attack on Canada. On board were nearly twelve thousand men. Compared with this imposing fleet, that of Phips, twenty-one years earlier, seems feeble. Phips had set out too late. This fleet was in good time, for it sailed on the 30th of July. Vetch, always competent, was in command of the colonial military forces, but never had any chance to show his mettle, for during the voyage the seamen were in control. The Admiral had left England with secret instructions. He had not been informed of the task before him and for it he was hardly prepared. There were no competent pilots to correct his ignorance. Now that he knew where he was going he was anxious about the dangers of the northern waters. The St. Lawrence River, he believed, froze solidly to the bottom in winter and he feared that the ice would crush the sides of his ships. As he had provisions for only eight or nine weeks, his men might starve. His mind was filled, as he himself says, with melancholy and dismal horror at the prospect of seamen and soldiers, worn to skeletons by hunger, drawing lots to decide who should die first amidst the “adamantine frosts” and “mountains of snow” of bleak and barren Canada.
The Gulf and River St. Lawrence spell death to an incompetent sailor. The fogs, the numerous shoals and islands, make skillful seamanship necessary. It is a long journey from Boston to Quebec by water. For three weeks, however, all went well. On the 22d of August, Walker was out of sight of land in the Gulf where it is about seventy miles wide above the Island of Anticosti. A strong east wind with thick fog is dreaded in those waters even now, and on the evening of that day a storm of this kind blew up. In the fog Walker lost his bearings. When in fact he was near the north shore he thought he was not far from the south shore. At half-past ten at night Paddon, the captain of theEdgar, Walker’s flagship, came to tell him that land was in sight. Walker assumed that it was the south shore and gave a fatal order for the fleet to turn and head northward, a change which turned them straight towards cliffs and breakers. He then went to bed. Soon one of the military officers rushed to his cabin and begged him to come on deck as the ships were among breakers. Walker, who was an irascible man, resented the intrusion and remained in bed. A second time the officer appeared and said the fleet would be lost if the Admiral did not act.Why it was left for a military rather than a naval officer to rouse the Admiral in such a crisis we do not know. Perhaps the sailors were afraid of the great man. Walker appeared on deck in dressing gown and slippers. The fog had lifted, and in the moonlight there could be seen breaking surf to leeward. A French pilot, captured in the Gulf, had taken pains to give what he could of alarming information. He now declared that the ships were off the north shore. Walker turned his own ship sharply and succeeded in beating out into deep water and safety. For the fleet the night was terrible. Some ships dropped anchor which held, for happily the storm abated. Fog guns and lights as signals of distress availed little to the ships in difficulty. Eight British transports laden with troops and two ships carrying supplies were dashed to pieces on the rocks. The shrieks of drowning men could be heard in the darkness. The scene was the rocky Isle aux Œufs and adjacent reefs off the north shore. About seven hundred soldiers, including twenty-nine officers, and in addition perhaps two hundred sailors, were lost on that awful night.
The disaster was not overwhelming and Walker might have gone on and captured Quebec. Hehad not lost a single war-ship and he had still some eleven thousand men. General Hill might have stiffened the back of the forlorn Admiral, but Hill himself was no better. Vetch spoke for going on. He knew the St. Lawrence waters for he had been at Quebec and had actually charted a part of the river and was more familiar with it, he believed, than were the Canadians themselves. What pilots there were declared, however, that to go on was impossible and the helpless captains of the ships were of opinion that, with the warning of such a disaster, they could not disregard this counsel. Though the character of the English is such that usually a reverse serves to stiffen their backs, in this case it was not so. A council of war yielded to the panic of the hour and the great fleet turned homeward. Soon it was gathered in what is now Sydney harbor in Cape Breton. From here the New England ships went home and Walker sailed for England. At Spithead theEdgar, the flag-ship, blew up and all on board perished. Walker was on shore at the time. So far was he from being disgraced that he was given a new command. Later, when the Whigs came in, he was dismissed from the service, less, it seems, in blame for the disaster than for his Toryopinions. It is not an unusual irony of life that Vetch, the one wholly efficient leader in the expedition, ended his days in a debtor’s prison.
Quebec had shivered before a menace, the greatest in its history. Through the long months of the summer of 1711 there had been prayer and fasting to avert the danger. Apparently trading ships had deserted the lower St. Lawrence in alarm, for no word had arrived at Quebec of the approach of Walker’s fleet. Nor had the great disaster been witnessed by any onlookers. The island where it occurred was then and still remains desert. Up to the middle of October, nearly two months after the disaster, the watchers at Quebec feared that they might see any day a British fleet rounding the head of the Island of Orleans. On the 19th of October the first news of the disaster arrived and then it was easy for Quebec to believe that God had struck the English wretches with a terrible vengeance. Three thousand men, it was said, had reached land and then perished miserably. Many bodies had been found naked and in attitudes of despair. Other thousands had perished in the water. Vessel-loads of spoil had been gathered, rich plate, beautiful swords, magnificent clothing, gold, silver, jewels. The truth seems to be thatsome weeks after the disaster the evidences of the wrecks were discovered. Even to this day ships are battered to pieces in those rock-strewn waters and no one survives to tell the story. Some fishermen landing on the island had found human bodies, dead horses and other animals, and the hulls of seven ships. They had gathered some wreckage—and that was the whole story. Quebec sangTe Deum. From attacks by sea there had now been two escapes which showed God’s love for Canada. In the little church ofNotre Dame des Victoires, consecrated at that time to the memory of the deliverance from Phips and Walker, daily prayers are still poured out for the well-being of Canada. God had been a present help on land as well as on the sea. Nicholson, with more than two thousand men, had been waiting at his camp near Lake Champlain to descend on Montreal as soon as Walker reached Quebec. When he received the news of the disaster he broke up his force and retired. For the moment Canada was safe from the threatened invasion.
In spite of this apparent deliverance, the long war, now near its end, brought a destructive blow to French power in America. Though France still possessed vigor and resources which herenemies were apt to underrate, the war had gone against her in Europe. Her finest armies had been destroyed by Marlborough, her taxation was crushing, her credit was ruined, her people were suffering for lack of food. The allies had begun to think that there was no humiliation which they might not put upon France. Louis XIV, they said, must give up Alsace, which, with Lorraine, he had taken some years earlier, and he must help to drive his own grandson from the Spanish throne. This exorbitant demand stirred the pride not only of Louis but of the French nation, and the allies found that they could not trample France under their feet. The Treaty of Utrecht, concluded in 1713, shows that each side was too strong as yet to be crushed. In dismissing Marlborough, Great Britain had lost one of her chief assets. His name had become a terror to France. To this day, both in France and in French Canada, is sung the popular ditty “Monsieur Malbrouck est mort,” a song of delight at a report that Marlborough was dead. When in place of Marlborough leaders of the type of General Hill were appointed to high command, France could not be finally beaten. The Treaty of Utrecht was the outcome of war-weariness. It marks, however, a double check toLouis XIV. He could not master Europe and he could not master America. France now ceded to Britain her claim to Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay. She regarded this, however, as only a temporary set-back and was soon planning and plotting great designs far surpassing the narrower vision of the English colonies.
It was with a wry face, however, that France yielded Acadia. To retain it she offered to give up all rights in the Newfoundland fisheries, the nursery of her marine. Britain would not yield Acadia, dreading chiefly perhaps the wrath of New England which had conquered Port Royal. Britain, however, compromised on the question of boundaries in a way so dangerous that the long war settled finally no great issues in America. She took Acadia “according to its ancient limits,”—but no one knew these limits. They were to be defined by a joint commission of the two nations which, after forty years, reached no agreement. The Island of Cape Breton and the adjoining Ile St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island, remained to France. Though Britain secured sovereignty over Newfoundland, France retained extensive rights in the Newfoundland fisheries. The treaty left unsettled the boundary between Canada andthe English colonies. While it yielded Hudson Bay to Britain, it settled nothing as to frontiers in the wilderness which stretched beyond the Great Lakes into the Far West and which had vast wealth in furs.
Louisbourg And Boston
Forthirty 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 justmade 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 ofBritish 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 withnegro 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 senseduring 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 reachedthe 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 near 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. TheTreaty 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 whatis 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 theFrench 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 wholeof 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 theIndians 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 Canseauby 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 Frenchofficers, 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 strangearmy 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 ofBritish 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, theVigilant, 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 theVigilantsurrender 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 sometwenty 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 makean 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 seashoreby 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 whichcomplacent 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 theMarsblew 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 theWest 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 Englandhad 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 bornewhat 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, aconsiderable 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.