But nothing could now resist Boscawen if the British should choose to run in past the demolished Island Battery and attack the French fleet, first from a distance, with the help of the Lighthouse and Royal Batteries, and then hand-to-hand. So the French admiral, des Gouttes, agreed to sink four of his largest vessels in the fairway. This, however, still left a gap; so two more were sunk. The passage was then mistakenly reported to be safely closed. The crews, two thousand strong, were landed and camped along the streets. This caused outspoken annoyance to the army and to the inhabitants, who thought the crews had not shown fight enough afloat, who consequently thought them of little use ashore, who found them in the way, and who feared they had come in without bringing a proper contribution of provisions to the common stock.
The Arethuse was presently withdrawn from her perilous berth next to the British left approach, as she was the only frigate left which seemed to have a chance of running the gauntlet of Boscawen's fleet. Her shot-holes were carefully stopped; and on the night of July 14, she was silently towed to the harbour mouth, whence she sailed for France with dispatches from Drucour and des Gouttes. The fog held dense, but the wind was light, and she could hardly forge ahead under every stitch of canvas. All round her the lights of the British fleet and convoy rose and fell with the heaving rollers, like little embers blurring through the mist. Yet Vauquelin took his dark and silent way quite safely, in and out between them, and reached France just after Louisbourg had fallen.
Meanwhile Drucour had made several sorties against the British front, while Boishebert had attacked their rear with a few hundred Indians, Acadians, and Canadians. Boishebert's attack was simply brushed aside by the rearguard of Amherst's overwhelming force. The American Rangers ought to have defeated it themselves, without the aid of regulars. But they were not the same sort of men as those who had besieged Louisbourg thirteen years before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been enlisted now. Of course, there were a few good men with some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come, which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon 'em in action. They fall down dead in their own dirt, and desert by battalions, officers and all.'
Drucour's sorties, made by good French regulars, were much more serious than Boishebert's feeble, irregular attack. On the night of July 8, while Montcalm's Ticonderogan heroes were resting on their hard-won field a thousand miles inland, Drucour's best troops crept out unseen and charged the British right. Lord Dundonald and several of his men were killed, while the rest were driven back to the second approach, where desperate work was done with the bayonet in the dark. But Wolfe commanded that part of the line, and his supports were under arms in a moment. The French attack had broken up into a score of little rough-and-tumble fights—bayonets, butts, and swords all at it; friend and foe mixed up in wild confusion. So the first properly formed troops carried all before them. The knots of struggling combatants separated into French and British. The French fell back on their defences. Their friends inside fired on the British; and Wolfe, having regained his ground, retired in the same good order on his lines.
A week later Wolfe suddenly dashed forward on the British left and seized Gallows Hill, within a musket-shot of the French right bastion. Here his men dug hard all night long, in spite of the fierce fire kept up on them at point-blank range. In the morning reliefs marched in, and the digging still continued. Sappers, miners, and infantry reliefs, they never stopped till they had burrowed forward another hundred yards, and the last great breaching battery had opened its annihilating fire. By the 21st both sides saw that the end was near, so far as the walls were concerned.
But it was not only the walls that were failing. For, that very afternoon of the 21st, a British seaman gunner's cleverly planted bomb found out a French ship's magazine, exploded it with shattering force, and set fire to the ships on either side. All three blazed furiously. The crews ran to quarters and did their best. But all to no purpose. Meanwhile the British batteries had turned every available gun on the conflagration, so as to prevent the French from saving anything. Between the roaring flames, the bursting shells, and the whizzing cannon balls, the three doomed vessels soon became an inferno too hot for men to stay in. The crews swarmed over the side and escaped; not, however, without losing a good many of their number. Then the British concentrated on the only two remaining vessels, the Prudent and the Bienfaisant. But the French sailors, with admirable pluck and judgment, managed to haul them round to a safer berth.
Next day a similar disaster befell the Louisbourg headquarters. A shell went through the roof of the barracks at the King's Bastion, burst among the men there, and set the whole place on fire. As the first tongues of flame shot up the British concentrated on them. The French ran to the threatened spot and worked hard, in spite of the storm of British shot and shell. But nothing was saved, except Drucour's own quarters. During the confusion the wind blew some burning debris against the timbers which protected the nearest casemates from exploding shells. An alarm was raised among the women and children inside. A panic followed; and the civilians of both sexes had their nerves so shaken that they thought of nothing but surrender on the spot.
Hardly had this excitement been allayed when the main barracks themselves caught fire. Fortunately they had been cleared when the other fire had shown how imminent the danger was to every structure along the walls. The barracks were in special danger of fire, for they had been left with the same wooden roof which the New Englanders had put on thirteen years before. Again the British guns converged their devastating fire on the point of danger, and the whole place was burned to the ground.
Most of the troops were now deprived of all shelter. They had no choice but to share the streets with a still larger number of sailors than those to whom they had formerly objected. Yet they had scarcely tried to settle down and make the best of it before another batch of sailors came crowding in from the last of the whole French fleet. At one o'clock in the morning of July 25 a rousing British cheer from the harbour had announced an attack on the Prudent and the Bienfaisant by six hundred bluejackets, who had stolen in, with muffled oars, just on the stroke of midnight. Presently the sound of fighting died away, and all was still. At first the nearest gunners on the walls had lost their heads and begun blazing away at random. But they were soon stopped; and neither side dared fire, not knowing whom the shots might kill. Then, as the escaping French came in to the walls, a bright glare told that the Prudent was on fire. She had cut her cable during the fight and was lying, hopelessly stranded, right under the inner walls of Louisbourg. The Bienfaisant, however, though now assailed by every gun the French could bring to bear, was towed off to a snug berth beside the Lighthouse Battery, the British bluejackets showing the same disregard of danger as their gallant enemies had shown on the 21st, when towing her to safety in the opposite direction.
At daylight Drucour made a thorough inspection of the walls, while the only four serviceable cannon left fired slowly on, as if for the funeral of Louisbourg. The British looked stronger than ever, and so close in that their sharpshooters could pick off the French gunners from the foot of the glacis. The best of the French diarists made this despairing entry: 'Not a house in the whole place but has felt the force of their cannonade. Between yesterday morning and seven o'clock to-night from a thousand to twelve hundred shells have fallen inside the town, while at least forty cannon have been firing incessantly as well. The surgeons have to run at many a cry of 'Ware Shell! for fear lest they should share the patients' fate.' Amherst had offered to spare the island or any one of the French ships if Drucour would put his hospital in either place. But, for some unexplained reason, Drucour declined the offer; though Amherst pointed out that no spot within so small a target as Louisbourg itself could possibly be made immune by any gunners in the world.
Reduced to the last extremity, the French council of war decided to ask for terms. Boscawen and Amherst replied that the whole garrison must surrender in an hour. Drucour sent back to beg for better terms. But the second British answer was even sterner—complete surrender, yes or no, in half an hour. Resentment still ran high against the French for the massacre at Fort William Henry the year before. The actual massacre had been the work of drunken Indians. The Canadians present had looked on. The French, headed by Montcalm, had risked their lives to save the prisoners. But such distinctions had been blotted out in the general rage among the British on both sides of the Atlantic; and so Louisbourg was now made the scapegoat.
Drucour at once wrote back to say that he stood by his first proposal, which meant, of course, that he was ready to face the storming of his works and no quarter for his garrison. His flag of truce started off with this defiance. But Prevost the intendant, with other civilians, now came forward, on behalf of the inhabitants, to beg for immediate surrender on any terms, rather than that they should all be exposed to the perils of assault. Drucour then gave way, and sent an officer running after the defiant flag of truce. As soon as this second messenger got outside the walls he called out, at the top of his voice, 'We accept! We accept!' He then caught up to the bearer of the flag of truce, when both went straight on to British headquarters.
Boscawen and Amherst were quite prepared for either surrender or assault. The storming parties had their scaling-ladders ready. The Forlorn Hopes had been told off to lead the different columns. Every gun was loaded, afloat and ashore. The fleet were waiting for the signal to file in and turn a thousand cannon against the walls. Nothing was lacking for complete success. On the other hand, their terms were also ready waiting. The garrison was to be sent to England as prisoners of war. The whole of Louisbourg, Cape Breton, and Isle St Jean (now Prince Edward Island) were to be surrendered immediately, with all the public property they contained. The West Gate was to be handed over to a British guard at eight the next morning; and the French arms were to be laid down for good at noon. With this document the British commanders sent in the following note:
SIR,—We have the honour to send Your Excellency thesigned articles of Capitulation.Lieutenant Colonel d'Anthony has spoken on behalf ofthe people in the town. We have no intention ofmolesting them; but shall give them all the protectionin our power.Your Excellency will kindly sign the duplicate of theterms and send it back to us.It only remains for us to assure Your Excellency thatwe shall seize every opportunity of convincing youthat we are, with the most perfect consideration, YourExcellency's most Obedient Servants,E. BOSCAWEN.J. AMHERST.
No terms were offered either to the Indians or to the armed Canadians, on account of Fort William Henry; and it is certain that all these would have been put to the sword, to the very last man, had Drucour decided to stand an assault. To the relief of every one concerned the Indians paddled off quietly during the night, which luckily happened to be unusually dark and calm. The Canadians either followed them or mingled with the unarmed inhabitants. This awkward problem therefore solved itself.
Few went to bed that last French night in Louisbourg. All responsible officials were busy with duties, reports, and general superintendence. The townsfolk and soldiery were restless and inclined to drown their humiliation in the many little cabarets, which stood open all night. A very different place, the parish church, was also kept open, and for a very different purpose. Many hasty marriages were performed, partly from a wholly groundless fear of British licence, and partly because those who wished to remain in Cape Breton thought they would not be allowed to do so unless they were married.
Precisely at eight the next morning Major Farquhar drew up his grenadiers in front of the West Gate, which was immediately surrendered to him. No one but the officers concerned witnessed this first ceremony. But the whole population thronged every point of vantage round the Esplanade to see the formal surrender at noon. All the British admirals and generals were present on parade as Drucour stepped forward, saluted, and handed his sword to Boscawen. His officers followed his example. Then the troops laid down their arms, in the ranks as they stood, many dashing down their muskets with a muttered curse.
The French—naval, military, and civilian—were soon embarked. The curse of Louisbourg followed most of them, in one form or another. The combatants were coldly received when they eventually returned to France, in spite of their gallant defence, and in spite of their having saved Quebec for that campaign. Several hundreds of the inhabitants were shipwrecked and drowned. One transport was abandoned off the coast of Prince Edward Island, with the loss of two hundred lives. Another sprang a leak as she was nearing England; whereupon, to their eternal dishonour, the crew of British merchant seamen took all the boats and started to pull off alone. The three hundred French prisoners, men, women, and children, crowded the ship's side and begged that, if they were themselves to be abandoned, their priest should be saved. A boat reluctantly put back for him. Then, leaving the ship to her fate, the crew pulled for Penzance, where the people had just been celebrating the glorious victory of Louisbourg.
The French loss had been enough without this. About one in five of all the combatants had been hit. Twice as many were on the sick list. Officers and men, officials and traders, fishermen and other inhabitants, all lost something, in certain cases everything they had; and it was to nothing but the sheer ruin of all French power beside the American Atlantic that Madame Drucour waved her long white scarf in a last farewell.
France was stung to the quick. Her sea link gone, she feared that the whole of Canada would soon be won by the same relentless British sea-power, which was quite as irresistible as it was ubiquitous in the mighty hands of Pitt. So deeply did her statesmen feel her imminent danger on the sea, and resent this particular British triumph in the world-wide 'Maritime War,' that they took the unusual course of sending the following circular letter to all the Powers of Europe:
We are advised that Louisbourg capitulated to theEnglish on July 26, We fully realize the consequencesof such a grave event. But we shall redouble ourefforts to repair the misfortune.All commercial nations ought now to open their eyesto their own interests and join us in preventing theabsolute tyranny which England will soon exercise onevery sea if a stop be not put to her boundless avariceand ambition.For a century past the Powers of Europe have beencrying out against France for disturbing the balanceof power on the Continent. But while England wasartfully fomenting this trouble she was herself engagedin upsetting that balance of power at sea withoutwhich these different nations' independent power onland cannot subsist. All governments ought to givetheir immediate and most serious attention to thissubject, as the English now threaten to usurp thewhole world's seaborne commerce for themselves.
While the French were taken up with unavailing protests and regrets the British were rejoicing with their whole heart. Their loss had been small. Only a twentieth of their naval and military total had been killed or wounded, or had died from sickness, during the seven weeks' siege. Their gain had been great. The one real fortress in America, the last sea link between Old France and New, the single sword held over their transatlantic shipping, was now unchallengeably theirs.
The good news travelled fast. Within three weeks of the surrender the dispatches had reached England. Defeats, disasters, and exasperating fiascos had been common since the war began. But at last there was a genuine victory, British through and through, won by the Army and Navy together, and won over the greatest of all rivals, France. 'When we lost Minorca,' said the London Chronicle, just a month after the surrender, 'a general panic fell upon the nation; but now that Louisbourg is taken our streets echo with triumph and blaze with illuminations.' Loyal addresses poured in from every quarter. The king stood on the palace steps to receive the eleven captured colours; and then, attended by the whole court, went in state to the royal thanksgiving service held in St Paul's Cathedral.
The thanks of parliament were voted to Amherst and Boscawen. Boscawen received them in person, being a member of the House of Commons. The speaker read the address, which was couched in the usual verbiage worked up by one of the select committees employed on such occasions. But Boscawen replied, as men of action should, with fewer words and much more force and point: 'Mr Speaker, Sir, I am happy to have been able to do my duty. I have no words to express my sense of the distinguished reward that has been conferred upon me by this House; nor can I thank you, Sir, enough for the polite and elegant manner in which you have been pleased to convey its resolution to me.'
The American colonists in general rejoiced exceedingly that Louisbourg and all it meant had been exterminated. But, especially in New England, their joy was considerably tempered by the reflection that the final blow had been delivered without their aid, and that the British arms had met with a terrible reverse at Ticonderoga, where the American militia had outnumbered the old-country regulars by half as much again. Nevertheless Boston built a 'stately bonfire,' which made a 'lofty and prodigious blaze'; while Philadelphia, despite its parasitic Quakers, had a most elaborate display of fireworks representing England, Louisbourg, the siege, the capture, the triumph, and reflected glory generally.
At the inland front, near Lake Champlain, where Abercromby now went by the opprobrious nickname of 'Mrs Nabbycrumby,' 'The General put out orders that the breastwork should be lined with troops, and to fire three rounds for joy, and give thanks to God in a Religious Way.' But the joy was more whole-hearted among the little, half-forgotten garrisons of Nova Scotia. At Annapolis no news arrived till well on in September, when a Boston sloop came sailing up the bay. Captain Knox, that most industrious of diarists, records the incident.
Every soul was impatient, yet shy of asking. At lengthI called out, 'What news from Louisbourg?' To whichthe master simply replied, and with some gravity,'Nothing strange.' This threw us all into greatconsternation, and some of us even turned away. Butone of our soldiers called out with some warmth 'Damnyou, Pumpkin, isn't Louisbourg taken yet?' The poorNew England man then answered: 'Taken, yes, above amonth ago; and I have been there since; but if youhaven't heard of it before, I have a good parcel ofletters for you now.' Instantly all hats flew off,and we made the neighbouring woods resound with ourcheers for almost half an hour.
Halifax naturally heard the news sooner than other places; and being then, as now, a naval port and a garrison town, it gave full vent to its feelings. Bells pealed. Bonfires blazed. Salutes thundered from the fort and harbour. But all this was a mere preliminary canter. The real race came off when the victorious fleet and army returned in triumph. Land and water were then indeed alive with exultant crowds. The streets were like a fair, and a noisy one at that. Soldiers, sailors, and civilians drank standing toasts the whole night through. The commissioner of excise recorded, not without a touch of proper pride, that, quite apart from all illicit wines and spirits, no less than sixty thousand gallons of good Jamaica rum were drunk in honour of the fall of Louisbourg. In higher circles, where wine was commoner than spirits, the toasts were honoured just as often. Governor Lawrence, fresh from Louisbourg himself, opened the new Government House with a grand ball; and Wolfe, whom all now thought the coming man, drank healths, sang songs, and danced with pretty partners to his heart's content.
The new garrison of Louisbourg hated it as thoroughly as any of their predecessors, French or British. They repaired the breaches, in a temporary way, and ran up shelters for the winter. Interest revived with the spring; for Wolfe was coming back again, this time to command an army of his own and take Quebec.
The great absorbing question was, Who's for the front and who for the base? Both fleet and army made their rendezvous at Louisbourg; a larger fleet and a smaller army than those of the year before. Two new toasts were going the rounds of the Service: 'Here's to the eye of a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe!' and 'Here's to British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America!' Of course they were standing toasts. The men who drank them already felt the presage of Pitt's great Empire Year of 1759.
The last two weeks in May and the first in June were full of glamour in crowded, stirring Louisbourg. There was Wolfe's picked army of nine thousand men, with Saunders's mighty fleet of fifty men-of-war, mounting two thousand guns, comprising a quarter of the whole Royal Navy, and convoying more than two hundred transports and provision ships; all coming and going, landing, embarking, drilling, dividing, massing; every one expectant of glorious results and eager to begin. Who wouldn't be for the front at the climax of a war like this?
Then came the final orders issued in Louisbourg. '1st June, 1759. The Troops land no more. The flat-bottomed boats to be hoisted in, that the ships may be ready to sail at the first signal.' '2nd June, 1759. The Admiral purposes sailing the first fair wind.' On the 4th a hundred and forty-one sail weighed anchor together. All that day and the next they were assembling outside and making for the island of Scatari, just beyond the point of Cape Breton, which is only ten miles north of Louisbourg. By noon on the 6th the last speck of white had melted away from the Louisbourg horizon and the men for the front were definitely parted from those left behind at the base.
Great things were dared and done at the front that year, in Europe, Asia, and America. But nothing was done at dull little Louisbourg, except the wearisome routine of a disgustingly safe base. Rocks, bogs, fogs, sand, and scrubby bush ashore. Tantalizing news from the stirring outside world afloat. So the long, blank, summer days wore through.
The second winter proved a little more comfortable than the first had been. But there was less, far less, for the garrison to expect in the spring. In February 1760 the death-warrant of Louisbourg was signed in London by Pitt and King George II. In the following summer it was executed by Captain John Byron, R. N., the poet's grandfather. Sailors, sappers, and miners worked for months together, laying the pride of Louisbourg level with the dust. That they carried out their orders with grim determination any one can see to-day by visiting the grave in which they buried so many French ambitions.
All the rest of Ile Royale lost its French life in the same supreme catastrophe—the little forts and trading-posts, the fishing-villages and hamlets; even the farms along the Mira, which once were thought so like the promise of a second French Acadia.
Nothing remains of that dead past, anywhere inland, except a few gnarled, weather-beaten stumps of carefully transplanted plum and apple trees, with, here and there, a straggling little patch of pale, forlorn narcissus, now soothing the alien air in vain, round shapeless ruins, as absolute and lone as those of Louisbourg itself.
There is no complete naval and military history of Louisbourg, in either French or English. The first siege is a prominent feature in all histories of Canada, New England, and the United States, though it is not much noticed in works written in the mother country. The second siege is noticed everywhere. The beginning and end of the story is generally ignored, and the naval side is always inadequately treated.
Parkman gives a good account of the first siege in 'A Half-Century of Conflict', and a less good account of the second in 'Montcalm and Wolfe'. Kingsford's accounts are in volumes iii and iv of the 'History of Canada'. Sir John Bourinot, a native of the island, wrote a most painstaking work on 'Cape Breton and its Memorials of the French Regime' which was first published in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada' for 1891. Garneau and other French-Canadian historians naturally emphasize a different set of facts and explanations. An astonishingly outspoken account of the first siege is given in the anonymous 'Lettre d'un Habitant de Louisbourg', which has been edited, with a translation, by Professor Wrong. The gist of many accounts is to be found, unpretentiously put together, in 'The Last Siege of Louisbourg', by C. O. Macdonald. New England produced many contemporary and subsequent accounts of the first siege, and all books concerned with the Conquest give accounts of the second.
Those who wish to go straight to original sources will find useful bibliographies in the notes to Parkman's and Bourinot's books, as well as in Justin Winsor's 'Narrative and Critical History of America'. But none of these includes some important items to be found either in or through the Dominion Archives at Ottawa, the Public Records Office in London, and the Archives de la Marine in Paris.