France and England in N America, Part VII, Vol 1: A Half-Century of Conflict

Canada had been warned of the storm gathering against her. Early in August, Vaudreuil received letters from Costebelle, at Placentia, telling him that English prisoners had reported mighty preparations at Boston against Quebec, and that Montreal was also to be attacked.179 The colony was ill prepared for the emergency, but no effort was spared to give the enemy a warm reception. The militia were mustered, Indians called together, troops held in readiness, and defences strengthened. The saints were invoked, and the aid of Heaven was implored by masses, processions, and penances, as in New England by a dismal succession of fasts. Mother Juchereau de Saint-Denis tells us how devout Canadians prayed for help from God and the most holy Virgin; "since their glory was involved, seeing that the true religion would quickly perish if the English should prevail." The general alarm produced effects which, though transient, were thought highly commendable while they lasted. The ladies, according to Mother Juchereau, gave up their ornaments, and became more modest and more pious. "Those of Montreal," pursues the worthy nun, "even outdid those of Quebec; for they bound themselves by oath to wear neither ribbons nor lace, to keep their throats covered, and to observe various holy practices for the space of a year." The recluse of Montreal, Mademoiselle Le Ber, who, by reason of her morbid seclusion and ascetic life, was accounted almost a saint, made a flag embroidered with a prayer to the Virgin, to be borne against the heretical bands of Nicholson.

When that commander withdrew, his retreat, though not the cause of it, was quickly known at Montreal, and the forces gathered there went down to Quebec to aid in repelling the more formidable attack by sea. Here all was suspense and expectancy till the middle of October, when the report came that two large ships had been seen in the river below. There was great excitement, for they were supposed to be the van of the British fleet; but alarm was soon turned to joy by the arrival of the ships, which proved to be French. On the nineteenth, the Sieur de la Valterie, who had come from Labrador in September, and had been sent down the river again by Vaudreuil to watch for the English fleet, appeared at Quebec with tidings of joy. He had descended the St. Lawrence in a canoe, with two Frenchmen and an Indian, till, landing at Isle aux Œufs on the first of October, they met two French sailors or fishermen loaded with plunder, and presently discovered the wrecks of seven English ships, with, as they declared, fifteen or sixteen hundred dead bodies on the strand hard by, besides dead horses, sheep, dogs, and hens, three or four hundred large iron-hooped casks, a barrel of wine and a barrel and a keg of brandy, cables, anchors, chains, planks, boards, shovels, picks, mattocks, and piles of old iron three feet high.180

"The least devout," writes Mother Juchereau, "were touched by the grandeur of the miracle wrought in our behalf,—a marvellous effect of God's love for Canada, which, of all these countries, is the only one that professes the true religion."

Quebec was not ungrateful. A solemn mass was ordered every month during a year, to be followed by the song of Moses after the destruction of Pharaoh and his host.181 Amazing reports were spread concerning the losses of the English. About three thousand of "these wretches"—so the story ran—died after reaching land, without counting the multitudes drowned in the attempt; and even this did not satisfy divine justice, for God blew up one of the ships by lightning during the storm. Vessels were sent to gather up the spoils of the wreck, and they came back, it was reported, laden with marvellous treasures, including rich clothing, magnificent saddles, plate, silver-hilted swords, and the like; bringing also the gratifying announcement that though the autumn tides had swept away many corpses, more than two thousand still lay on the rocks, naked and in attitudes of despair.182 These stories, repeated by later writers, find believers to this day.183

When Walker and his ships reached Spanish River, he called another council of war. The question was whether, having failed to take Quebec, they should try to take Placentia; and it was resolved that the short supply of provisions, the impossibility of getting more from Boston before the first of November, and the risks of the autumnal storms, made the attempt impracticable. Accordingly, the New England transports sailed homeward, and the British fleet steered for the Thames.

Swift writes on the sixth of October in his Journal to Stella: "The news of Mr. Hill's miscarriage in his expedition came to-day, and I went to visit Mrs. Masham and Mrs. Hill, his two sisters, to condole with them." A week after, he mentions the arrival of the general himself; and again on the sixteenth writes thus: "I was to see Jack Hill this morning, who made that unfortunate expedition; and there is still more misfortune, for that ship which was admiral of his fleet [the "Edgar"] is blown up in the Thames by an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going, as they think, to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men are lost."

A report of this crowning disaster reached Quebec, and Mother Juchereau does not fail to improve it. According to her, the Admiral, stricken with divine justice, and wrought to desperation, blew up the ship himself, and perished with all on board, except only two men.

There was talk of an examination into the causes of the failure, but nothing was done. Hill, strong in the influence of Mrs. Masham, reaped new honors and offices. Walker, more answerable for the result, and less fortunate in court influence, was removed from command, and his name was stricken from the half-pay list. He did not, however, blow himself up, but left England and emigrated to South Carolina, whence, thinking himself ill-treated by the authorities, he removed to Barbadoes, and died some years later.184

CHAPTER IX

1712-1749LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA

Peace of Utrecht.—Perilous Questions.—Louisbourg founded.—Annapolis attacked.—Position of the Acadians.—Weakness of the British Garrison.—Apathy of the Ministry.—French Intrigue.—Clerical Politicians.—The Oath of Allegiance.—Acadians refuse it: their Expulsion proposed; they take the Oath.

The great European war was drawing to an end, and with it the American war, which was but its echo. An avalanche of defeat and disaster had fallen upon the old age of Louis XIV., and France was burdened with an insupportable load of debt. The political changes in England came to her relief. Fifty years later, when the elder Pitt went out of office and Bute came in, France had cause to be grateful; for the peace of 1763 was far more favorable to her than it would have been under the imperious war minister. It was the same in 1712. The Whigs who had fallen from power would have wrung every advantage from France; the triumphant Tories were eager to close with her on any terms not so easy as to excite popular indignation. The result was the Treaty of Utrecht, which satisfied none of the allies of England, and gave to France conditions more favorable than she had herself proposed two years before. The fall of Godolphin and the disgrace of Marlborough were a godsend to her.

Yet in America Louis XIV. made important concessions. The Five Nations of the Iroquois were acknowledged to be British subjects; and this became in future the preposterous foundation for vast territorial claims of England. Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia, "according to its ancient limits," were also given over by France to her successful rival; though the King parted from Acadia with a reluctance shown by the great offers he made for permission to retain it.185

But while the Treaty of Utrecht seemed to yield so much, and yielded so much in fact, it staved off the settlement of questions absolutely necessary for future peace. The limits of Acadia, the boundary line between Canada and the British colonies, and the boundary between those colonies and the great western wilderness claimed by France, were all left unsettled, since the attempt to settle them would have rekindled the war. The peace left the embers of war still smouldering, sure, when the time should come, to burst into flame. The next thirty years were years of chronic, smothered war, disguised, but never quite at rest. The standing subjects of dispute were three, very different in importance. First, the question of Acadia: whether the treaty gave England a vast country, or only a strip of seacoast. Next, that of northern New England and the Abenaki Indians, many of whom French policy still left within the borders of Maine, and whom both powers claimed as subjects or allies. Last and greatest was the question whether France or England should hold the valleys of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and with them the virtual control of the continent. This was the triple problem that tormented the northern English colonies for more than a generation, till it found a solution at last in the Seven Years' War.

Louis XIV. had deeply at heart the recovery of Acadia. Yet the old and infirm King, whose sun was setting in clouds after half a century of unrivalled splendor, felt that peace was a controlling necessity, and he wrote as follows to his plenipotentiaries at Utrecht: "It is so important to prevent the breaking off of the negotiations that the King will give up both Acadia and Cape Breton, if necessary for peace; but the plenipotentiaries will yield this point only in the last extremity, for by this double cession Canada will become useless, the access to it will be closed, the fisheries will come to an end, and the French marine be utterly destroyed."186 And he adds that if the English will restore Acadia, he, the King, will give them, not only St. Christopher, but also the islands of St. Martin and St. Bartholomew.

The plenipotentiaries replied that the offer was refused, and that the best they could do without endangering the peace was to bargain that Cape Breton should belong to France.187 On this, the King bid higher still for the coveted province, and promised that if Acadia were returned to him, the fortifications of Placentia should be given up untouched, the cannon in the forts of Hudson Bay abandoned to the English, and the Newfoundland fisheries debarred to Frenchmen,188—a remarkable concession; for France had fished on the banks of Newfoundland for two centuries, and they were invaluable to her as a nursery of sailors. Even these offers were rejected, and England would not resign Acadia.

Cape Breton was left to the French. This large island, henceforth called by its owners Isle Royale, lies east of Acadia, and is separated from it only by the narrow Strait of Canseau. From its position, it commands the chief entrance of the gulf and river of St. Lawrence. Some years before, the intendant Raudot had sent to the court an able paper, in which he urged its occupation and settlement, chiefly on commercial and industrial grounds. The war was then at its height; the plan was not carried into effect, and Isle Royale was still a wilderness. It was now proposed to occupy it for military and political reasons. One of its many harbors, well fortified and garrisoned, would guard the approaches of Canada, and in the next war furnish a base for attacking New England and recovering Acadia.

After some hesitation the harbor called Port à l'Anglois was chosen for the proposed establishment, to which the name of Louisbourg was given, in honor of the King. It lies near the southeastern point of the island, where an opening in the ironbound coast, at once easily accessible and easily defended, gives entrance to a deep and sheltered basin, where a fleet of war-ships may find good anchorage. The proposed fortress was to be placed on the tongue of land that lies between this basin and the sea. The place, well chosen from the point of view of the soldier or the fisherman, was unfit for an agricultural colony, its surroundings being barren hills studded with spruce and fir, and broad marshes buried in moss.

In spite of the losses and humiliations of the war, great expectations were formed from the new scheme. Several years earlier, when the proposals of Raudot were before the Marine Council, it was confidently declared that a strong fortress on Cape Breton would make the King master of North America. The details of the establishment were settled in advance. The King was to build the fortifications, supply them with cannon, send out eight companies of soldiers, besides all the usual officers of government, establish a well-endowed hospital, conducted by nuns, as at Quebec, provide Jesuits and Récollets as chaplains, besides Filles de la Congrégation to teach girls, send families to the spot, support them for two years, and furnish a good number of young women to marry the soldiers.189

This plan, or something much like it, was carried into effect. Louisbourg was purely and solely the offspring of the Crown and its ally, the Church. In time it grew into a compact fishing town of about four thousand inhabitants, with a strong garrison and a circuit of formidable ramparts and batteries. It became by far the strongest fortress on the Atlantic coast, and so famous as a resort of privateers that it was known as the Dunquerque of America.

What concerns us now is its weak and troubled infancy. It was to be peopled in good part from the two lost provinces of Acadia and Newfoundland, whose inhabitants were to be transported to Louisbourg or other parts of Isle Royale, which would thus be made at once and at the least possible cost a dangerous neighbor to the newly acquired possessions of England. The Micmacs of Acadia, and even some of the Abenakis, were to be included in this scheme of immigration.

In the autumn, the commandant of Plaisance, or Placentia,—the French stronghold in Newfoundland,—received the following mandate from the King:—

Monsieur de Costebelle,—I have caused my orders to be given you to evacuate the town and forts of Plaisance and the other places of your government of Newfoundland, ceded to my dear sister the Queen of Great Britain. I have given my orders for the equipment of the vessels necessary to make the evacuation and transport you, with the officers, garrison, and inhabitants of Plaisance and other places of Newfoundland, to my Isle Royale, vulgarly called Cape Breton; but as the season is so far advanced that this cannot be done without exposing my troops and my subjects to perishing from cold and misery, and placing my vessels in evident peril of wreck, I have judged it proper to defer the transportation till the next spring.190

The inhabitants of Placentia consisted only of twenty-five or thirty poor fishermen, with their families,191 and some of them would gladly have become English subjects and stayed where they were; but no choice was given them. "Nothing," writes Costebelle, "can cure them of the error, to which they obstinately cling, that they are free to stay or go, as best suits their interest."192 They and their fishing-boats were in due time transported to Isle Royale, where for a while their sufferings were extreme.

Attempts were made to induce the Indians of Acadia to move to the new colony; but they refused, and to compel them was out of the question. But by far the most desirable accession to the establishment of Isle Royale would be that of the Acadian French, who were too numerous to be transported in the summary manner practised in the case of the fishermen of Placentia. It was necessary to persuade rather than compel them to migrate, and to this end great reliance was placed on their priests, especially Fathers Pain and Dominique. Ponchartrain himself wrote to the former on the subject. The priest declares that he read the letter to his flock, who answered that they wished to stay in Acadia; and he adds that the other Acadians were of the same mind, being unwilling to leave their rich farms and risk starvation on a wild and barren island.193 "Nevertheless," he concludes, "we shall fulfil the intentions of his Majesty by often holding before their eyes that religion for which they ought to make every sacrifice." He and his brother priests kept their word. Freedom of worship was pledged on certain conditions to the Acadians by the Treaty of Utrecht, and no attempt was ever made to deprive them of it; yet the continual declaration of their missionaries that their souls were in danger under English rule was the strongest spur to impel them to migrate.

The condition of the English in Acadia since it fell into their hands had been a critical one. Port Royal, thenceforth called Annapolis Royal, or simply Annapolis, had been left, as before mentioned, in charge of Colonel Vetch, with a heterogeneous garrison of four hundred and fifty men.194 The Acadians of the banlieue—a term defined as covering a space of three miles round the fort—had been included in the capitulation, and had taken an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, binding so long as they remained in the province. Some of them worked, for the garrison and helped to repair the fort, which was in a ruinous condition. Meanwhile the Micmac Indians remained fiercely hostile to the English; and in June, 1711, aided by a band of Penobscots, they ambuscaded and killed or captured nearly seventy of them. This completely changed the attitude of the Acadians. They broke their oath, rose against their new masters, and with their Indian friends, invested the fort to the number of five or six hundred. Disease, desertion, and the ambuscade had reduced the garrison to about two hundred effective men, and the defences of the place were still in bad condition.195 The assailants, on the other hand, had no better leader than the priest, Gaulin, missionary of the Micmacs and prime mover in the rising. He presently sailed for Placentia to beg for munitions and a commander; but his errand failed, the siege came to nought, and the besiegers dispersed. Vaudreuil, from whom the Acadians had begged help, was about to send it when news of the approach of Walker's fleet forced him to keep all his strength for his own defence.

From this time to the end of the war, the chief difficulties of the governor of Acadia rose, not from the enemy, but from the British authorities at home. For more than two years he, with his starved and tattered garrison, were treated with absolute neglect. He received no orders, instructions, or money.196 Acadia seemed forgotten by the ministry, till Vetch heard at last that Nicholson was appointed to succeed him.

Now followed the Treaty of Utrecht, the cession of Acadia to England, and the attempt on the part of France to induce the Acadians to remove to Isle Royale. Some of the English officials had once been of opinion that this French Catholic population should be transported to Martinique or some other distant French colony, and its place supplied by Protestant families sent from England or Ireland.197 Since the English Revolution, Protestantism was bound up with the new political order, and Catholicism with the old. No Catholic could favor the Protestant succession, and hence politics were inseparable from creed. Vetch, who came of a race of hot and stubborn Covenanters, had been one of the most earnest for replacing the Catholic Acadians by Protestants; but after the peace he and others changed their minds. No Protestant colonists appeared, nor was there the smallest sign that the government would give itself the trouble to attract any. It was certain that if the Acadians removed at all, they would go, not to Martinique or any other distant colony, but to the new military establishment of Isle Royale, which would thus become a strong and dangerous neighbor to the feeble British post of Annapolis. Moreover, the labor of the French inhabitants was useful and sometimes necessary to the English garrison, which depended mainly on them for provisions; and if they left the province, they would leave it a desert, with the prospect of long remaining so.

Hence it happened that the English were for a time almost as anxious to keep the Acadians in Acadia as they were forty years later to get them out of it; nor had the Acadians themselves any inclination to leave their homes. But the French authorities needed them at Isle Royale, and made every effort to draw them thither. By the fourteenth article of the Treaty of Utrecht such of them as might choose to leave Acadia were free to do so within the space of a year, carrying with them their personal effects; while a letter of Queen Anne, addressed to Nicholson, then governor of Acadia, permitted the emigrants to sell their lands and houses.

The missionary Félix Pain had reported, as we have seen, that they were, in general, disposed to remain where they were; on which Costebelle, who now commanded at Louisbourg, sent two officers, La Ronde Denys and Pensens, with instructions to set the priests at work to persuade their flocks to move.198 La Ronde Denys and his colleague repaired to Annapolis, where they promised the inhabitants vessels for their removal, provisions for a year, and freedom from all taxation for ten years. Then, having been well prepared in advance, the heads of families were formed in a circle, and in presence of the English governor, the two French officers, and the priests Justinien, Bonaventure, and Gaulin, they all signed, chiefly with crosses, a paper to the effect that they would live and die subjects of the King of France.199 A few embarked at once for Isle Royale in the vessel "Marie-Joseph," and the rest were to follow within the year.

This result was due partly to the promises of La Ronde Denys, and still more to a pastoral letter from the Bishop of Quebec, supporting the assurances of the missionaries that the heretics would rob them of the ministrations of the Church. This was not all. The Acadians about Annapolis had been alienated by the conduct of the English authorities, which was not conciliating, and on the part of the governor was sometimes outrageous.200 Yet those of the banlieue had no right to complain, since they had made themselves liable to the penalties of treason by first taking an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, and then breaking it by trying to seize her fort.201

Governor Nicholson, like his predecessor, was resolved to keep the Acadians in the province if he could. This personage, able, energetic, perverse, headstrong, and unscrupulous, conducted himself, even towards the English officers and soldiers, in a manner that seems unaccountable, and that kindled their utmost indignation.202 Towards the Acadians his behavior was still worse. As Costebelle did not keep his promise to send vessels to bring them to Isle Royale, they built small ones for themselves, and the French authorities at Louisbourg sent them the necessary rigging. Nicholson ordered it back, forbade the sale of their lands and houses,—a needless stretch of power, as there was nobody to buy,—and would not let them sell even their personal effects, coolly setting at nought both the Treaty of Utrecht and the letter of the Queen.203

Nicholson was but a short time at Annapolis, leaving the government, during most of his term, to his deputies, Caulfield and afterwards Doucette, both of whom roundly denounce their principal for his general conduct; while both, in one degree or another, followed his example in preventing so far as they could the emigration of the Acadians. Some of them, however, got away, and twelve or fifteen families who settled at Port Toulouse, on Isle Royale, were near perishing from cold and hunger.204

From Annapolis the French agents, La Ronde Denys and Pensens, proceeded to the settlements about Chignecto and the Basin of Mines,—the most populous and prosperous parts of Acadia. Here they were less successful than before. The people were doubtful and vacillating,—ready enough to promise, but slow to perform. While declaring with perfect sincerity their devotion to "our invincible monarch," as they called King Louis, who had just been compelled to surrender their country, they clung tenaciously to the abodes of their fathers. If they had wished to emigrate, the English governor had no power to stop them. From Baye Verte, on the isthmus, they had frequent and easy communication with the French at Louisbourg, which the English did not and could not interrupt. They were armed, and they far outnumbered the English garrison; while at a word they could bring to their aid the Micmac warriors, who had been taught to detest the English heretics as foes of God and man. To say that they wished to leave Acadia, but were prevented from doing so by a petty garrison at the other end of the province, so feeble that it could hardly hold Annapolis itself, is an unjust reproach upon a people who, though ignorant and weak of purpose, were not wanting in physical courage. The truth is that from this time to their forced expatriation in 1755, all the Acadians, except those of Annapolis and its immediate neighborhood, were free to go or stay at will. Those of the eastern parts of the province especially, who formed the greater part of the population, were completely their own masters. This was well known to the French authorities. The governor of Louisbourg complains of the apathy of the Acadians.205 Saint-Ovide declares that they do not want to fulfil the intentions of the King and remove to Isle Royale. Costebelle makes the same complaint; and again, after three years of vain attempts to overcome their reluctance, he writes that every effort has failed to induce them to migrate.