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A Half Century of Conflict, Volume II

F >> Francis Parkman >> A Half Century of Conflict, Volume II




The French saw with dismay a large quantity of fascines carried to the foot
of the glacis, ready to fill the ditch, and their scouts came in with
reports that more than a thousand scaling-ladders were lying behind the
ridge of the nearest hill. Toil, loss of sleep, and the stifling air of
the casemates, in which they were forced to take refuge, had sapped the
strength of the besieged. The town was a ruin; only one house was
untouched by shot or shell. "We could have borne all this," writes the
Intendant, Bigot; "but the scarcity of powder, the loss of the 'Vigilant,'
the presence of the squadron, and the absence of any news from Marin, who
had been ordered to join us with his Canadians and Indians, spread terror
among troops and inhabitants. The townspeople said that they did not want
to be put to the sword, and were not strong enough to resist a general
assault." [Footnote: _Bigot au Ministre, 1 Août, 1745_.] On the 15th
of June they brought a petition to Duchambon, begging him to capitulate.
[Footnote: _Duchambon au Ministre, 2 Sept. 1745_.]

On that day Captain Sherburn, at the advanced battery, wrote in his diary:
"By 12 o'clock we had got all our platforms laid, embrazures mended, guns
in order, shot in place, cartridges ready, dined, gunners quartered,
matches lighted to return their last favours, when we heard their drums
beat a parley; and soon appeared a flag of truce, which I received midway
between our battery and their walls, conducted the officer to Green Hill,
and delivered him to Colonel Richman [Richmond]."

La Perelle, the French officer, delivered a note from Duchambon, directed
to both Pepperrell and Warren, and asking for a suspension of arms to
enable him to draw up proposals for capitulation. [Footnote: _Duchambon à
Pepperrell et Warren, 26 Juin_ (new style), 1745.] Warren chanced to be
on shore when the note came; and the two commanders answered jointly that
it had come in good time, as they had just resolved on a general attack,
and that they would give the Governor till eight o'clock of the next
morning to make his proposals. [Footnote: _Warren and Pepperrell to
Duchambon, 15 June_, 1745.]

They came in due time, but were of such a nature that Pepperrell refused to
listen to them, and sent back Bonaventure, the officer who brought them,
with counter-proposals. These were the terms which Duchambon had rejected
on the 7th of May, with added conditions; as, among others, that no
officer, soldier, or inhabitant of Louisbourg should bear arms against the
King of England or any of his allies for the space of a year. Duchambon
stipulated, as the condition of his acceptance, that his troops should
march out of the fortress with their arms and colors. [Footnote:
_Duchambon à Warren et Pepperrell, 27 Juin_ (new style), 1745.] To
this both the English commanders consented, Warren observing to Pepperrell
"the uncertainty of our affairs, that depend so much on wind and weather,
makes it necessary not to stickle at trifles." [Footnote: _Pepperrell to
Warren, 16 June, 1745, Warren to Pepperrell, 16 June, 1745._] The
articles were signed on both sides, and on the 17th the ships sailed
peacefully into the harbor, while Pepperrell with a part of his ragged army
entered the south gate of the town.

"Never was a place more mal'd [mauled] with cannon and shells," he writes
to Shirley; "neither have I red in History of any troops behaving with
greater courage. We gave them about nine thousand cannon-balls and six
hundred bombs." [Footnote: _Pepperrell to Shirley, 18 June_ (old
style,) 1745. _Ibid._, 4 July, 1745.] Thus this unique military
performance ended in complete and astonishing success.

According to English accounts, the French had lost about three hundred men
during the siege; but their real loss seems to have been not much above a
third of that number. On the side of the besiegers, the deaths from all
causes were only a hundred and thirty, about thirty of which were from
disease. The French used their muskets to good purpose; but their mortar
practice was bad, and close as was the advanced battery to their walls,
they often failed to hit it, while the ground on both sides of it looked
like a ploughed field, from the bursting of their shells. Their surrender
was largely determined by want of ammunition, as, according to one account,
the French had but thirty-seven barrels of gunpowder left, [Footnote:
_Habitant de Louisbourg._]--in which particular the besiegers fared
little better. [Footnote: Pepperrell more than once complains of a total
want of both powder and balls. Warren writes to him on May 29th: "It is
very lucky that we could spare you some powder; I am told you had not a
grain left."]

The New England men had been full of confidence in the result of the
proposed assault, and a French writer says that the timely capitulation
saved Louisbourg from a terrible catastrophe; [Footnote: "C'est par une
protection visible de la Providence que nous avons prévenu une journée qui
nous auroit été si funeste." _Lettre d'un Habitant de Louisbourg._]
yet, ill-armed and disorderly as the besiegers were, it may be doubted
whether the quiet ending of the siege was not as fortunate for them as for
their foes. The discouragement of the French was increased by greatly
exaggerated ideas of the force of the "Bastonnais." The _Habitant de
Louisbourg_ places the land-force alone at eight or nine thousand men,
and Duchambon reports to the minister D'Argenson that he was attacked in
all by thirteen thousand. His mortifying position was a sharp temptation to
exaggerate; but his conduct can only be explained by a belief that the
force of his enemy was far greater than it was in fact.

Warren thought that the proposed assault would succeed, and wrote to
Pepperrell that he hoped they would "soon keep a good house together, and
give the Ladys of Louisbourg a Gallant Ball." [Footnote: _Warren to
Pepperrell, 10 June, 1745._] During his visit to the camp on the
day when the flag of truce came out, he made a speech to the New England
soldiers, exhorting them to behave like true Englishmen; at which they
cheered lustily. Making a visit to the Grand Battery on the same day, he
won high favor with the regiment stationed there by the gift of a hogshead
of rum to drink his health.

Whether Warren's "gallant ball" ever took place in Louisbourg does not
clearly appear. Pepperrell, on his part, celebrated the victory by a dinner
to the commodore and his officers. As the redoubtable Parson Moody was the
general's chaplain and the oldest man in the army, he expected to ask a
blessing at the board, and was, in fact, invited to do so,--to the great
concern of those who knew his habitual prolixity, and dreaded its effect on
the guests. At the same time, not one of them dared rasp his irritable
temper by any suggestion of brevity; and hence they came in terror to the
feast, expecting an invocation of a good half-hour, ended by open revolt of
the hungry Britons; when, to their surprise and relief, Moody said: "Good
Lord, we have so much to thank thee for, that time will be too short, and
we must leave it for eternity. Bless our food and fellowship upon this
joyful occasion, for the sake of Christ our Lord, Amen." And with that he
sat down. [Footnote: _Collection of Mass. Hist. Society. I. 49_]

It is said that he had been seen in the French church hewing at the altar
and images with the axe that he had brought for that purpose; and perhaps
this iconoclastic performance had eased the high pressure of his zeal.
[Footnote: A descendant of Moody, at the village of York, told me that he
was found in the church busy in the work of demolition.]

Amazing as their triumph was, Pepperrell's soldiers were not satisfied with
the capitulation, and one of them utters his disapproval in his diary thus:
"Sabbath Day, ye 16th June. They came to Termes for us to enter ye Sitty to
morrow, and Poore Termes they Bee too."

The occasion of discontent was the security of property assured to the
inhabitants, "by which means," says that dull chronicler, Niles, "the poor
soldiers lost all their hopes and just demerit [desert] of plunder promised
them." In the meagreness of their pay they thought themselves entitled to
the plunder of Louisbourg, which they imagined to be a seat of wealth and
luxury. Nathaniel Sparhawk, Pepperrell's thrifty son-in-law, shared this
illusion, and begged the General to get for him (at a low price) a handsome
service of silver plate. When the volunteers exchanged their wet and dreary
camp for what they expected to be the comfortable quarters of the town,
they were disgusted to see the houses still occupied by the owners, and to
find themselves forced to stand guard at the doors, to protect them.
[Footnote: "Thursday, ye 21st. Ye French keep possession yet, and we are
forsed to stand at their Dores to gard them." _Diary of a Soldier,
anonymous._] "A great Noys and hubbub a mongst ye Solders a bout ye
Plunder; Som Cursing, som a Swarein," writes one of the disgusted victors.

They were not, and perhaps could not be, long kept in order; and when, in
accordance with the capitulation, the inhabitants had been sent on board
vessels for transportation to France, discipline gave way, and General
Wolcott records that, while Moody was preaching on a Sunday in the
garrison-chapel, there was "excessive stealing in every part of the town."
Little, however, was left to steal.

But if the army found but meagre gleanings, the navy reaped a rich harvest.
French ships, instead of being barred out of the harbor, were now lured to
enter it. The French flag was kept flying over the town, and in this way
prizes were entrapped to the estimated value of a million sterling, half of
which went to the Crown, and the rest to the British officers and crews,
the army getting no share whatever.

Now rose the vexed question of the relative part borne by the colonies and
the Crown, the army and the navy, in the capture of Louisbourg; and here it
may be well to observe the impressions of a French witness of the siege.
"It was an enterprise less of the English nation and its King than of the
inhabitants of New England alone. This singular people have their own laws
and administration, and their governor plays the sovereign. Admiral
[Commodore] Warren had no authority over the troops sent by the Governor of
Boston, and he was only a spectator.... Nobody would have said that their
sea and land forces were of the same nation and under the same prince. No
nation but the English is capable of such eccentricities
(_bizarreries_),--which, nevertheless, are a part of the precious
liberty of which they show themselves so jealous." [Footnote: _Lettre
d'un Habitant de Louisbourg_.]

The French writer is correct when he says that the land and sea forces were
under separate commands, and it is equally true that but for the
conciliating temper of Pepperrell, harmony could not have been preserved
between the two chiefs; but when he calls Warren a mere spectator, he does
glaring injustice to that gallant officer, whose activity and that of his
captains was incessant, and whose services were invaluable. They
maintained, with slight lapses, an almost impossible blockade, without
which the siege must have failed. Two or three small vessels got into the
harbor; but the capture of the "Vigilant," more than any other event of the
siege, discouraged the French and prepared them for surrender.

Several English writers speak of Warren and the navy as the captors of
Louisbourg, and all New England writers give the chief honor to Pepperrell
and the army. Neither army nor navy would have been successful without the
other. Warren and his officers, in a council of war, had determined that so
long as the Island Battery and the water batteries of the town remained in
an efficient state, the ships could not enter the harbor; and Warren had
personally expressed the same opinion. [Footnote: _Report of Consultation
on board the "Superbe" 7 June, 1745_. "Commodore Warren did say
publickly that before the Circular Battery was reduced he would not venture
in here with three times ye sea force he had with him, and, through divine
assistance, we tore that [battery] and this city almost to pieces."
_Pepperrell to Shirley, 4 July, 1745_.] He did not mean to enter till
all the batteries which had made the attempt impracticable, including the
Circular Battery, which was the most formidable of all, had been silenced
or crippled by the army, and by the army alone. The whole work of the siege
fell upon the land forces; and though it had been proposed to send a body
of marines on shore, this was not done. [Footnote: Warren had no men to
spare. He says: "If it should be thought necessary to join your troops with
any men from our ships, it should only be done for some sudden attack that
may be executed in one day or night." _Warren to Pepperrell, 11 May,
1745._ No such occasion arose.] Three or four gunners, "to put your men
in the way of loading cannon," [Footnote: _Ibid., 13 May, 1745._ On
the 19th of May, 1746, Warren made a parting speech to the New England men
at Louisbourg, in which he tells them that it was they who conquered the
country, and expresses the hope that should the French try to recover it,
"the same Spirit that induced you to make this Conquest will prompt you to
protect it." See the speech in _Beamish-Murdoch_, II. 100-102.] was
Warren's contribution to the operations of the siege; though the fear of
attack by the ships, jointly with the land force, no doubt hastened the
surrender. Beauharnois, governor of Canada, ascribes the defeat to the
extreme activity with which the New England men pushed their attacks.

The _Habitant de Louisbourg_ says that each of the two commanders was
eager that the keys of the fortress should be delivered to him, and not to
his colleague; that before the surrender, Warren sent an officer to
persuade the French that it would be for their advantage to make their
submission to him rather than to Pepperrell; and that it was in fact so
made. Wolcott, on the other hand, with the best means of learning the
truth, says in his diary that Pepperrell received the keys at the South
Gate. The report that it was the British commodore, and not their own
general, to whom Louisbourg surrendered, made a prodigious stir among the
inhabitants of New England, who had the touchiness common to small and
ambitious peoples, and as they had begun the enterprise and borne most of
its burdens and dangers, they thought themselves entitled to the chief
credit of it. Pepperrell was blamed as lukewarm for the honor of his
country because he did not demand the keys and reject the capitulation if
they were refused. After all this ebullition it appeared that the keys were
in his hands, for when, soon after the siege, Shirley came to Louisbourg,
Pepperrell formally presented them to him, in presence of the soldiers.

Warren no doubt thought that he had a right to precedence, as being an
officer of the King in regular standing, while Pepperrell was but a
civilian, clothed with temporary rank by the appointment of a provincial
governor. Warren was an impetuous sailor accustomed to command, and
Pepperrell was a merchant accustomed to manage and persuade. The difference
appears in their correspondence during the siege. Warren is sometimes
brusque and almost peremptory; Pepperrell is forbearing and considerate to
the last degree. He liked Warren, and, to the last, continued to praise him
highly in letters to Shirley and other provincial governors; [Footnote: See
extracts in Parson, 105,106. The _Habitant de Louisbourg_ extols
Warren, but is not partial to Pepperrell, whom he calls, incorrectly, "the
son of a Boston shoemaker."] while Warren, on occasion of Shirley's arrival
at Louisbourg, made a speech highly complimentary to both the General and
his soldiers.

The news that Louisbourg was taken, reached Boston at one o'clock in the
morning of the 3d of July by a vessel sent express. A din of bells and
cannon proclaimed it to the slumbering townsmen, and before the sun rose,
the streets were filled with shouting crowds. At night every window shone
with lamps, and the town was ablaze with fireworks and bonfires. The next
Thursday was appointed a day of general thanksgiving for a victory believed
to be the direct work of Providence. New York and Philadelphia also hailed
the great news with illuminations, ringing of bells, and firing of cannon.

In England the tidings were received with astonishment and a joy that was
dashed with reflections on the strength and mettle of colonists supposed
already to aspire to independence. Pepperrell was made a baronet, and
Warren an admiral. The merchant soldier was commissioned colonel in the
British army; a regiment was given him, to be raised in America and
maintained by the King, while a similar recognition was granted to the
lawyer Shirley. [Footnote: To Rous, captain of a provincial cruiser, whom
Warren had commended for conduct and courage, was given the command of a
ship in the royal navy. "Tell your Council and Assembly, in his Majesty's
name," writes Newcastle to Shirley, "that their conduct will always entitle
them, in a particular manner, to his royal favor and protection."
_Newcastle to Shirley, 10 Aug. 1745._]

A question vital to Massachusetts worried her in the midst of her triumph.
She had been bankrupt for many years, and of the large volume of her
outstanding obligations, a part was not worth eightpence in the pound.
Added to her load of debt, she had spent £183,649 sterling on the
Louisbourg expedition. That which Smollett calls "the most important
achievement of the war" would never have taken place but for her, and Old
England, and not New, was to reap the profit; for Louisbourg, conquered by
arms, was to be restored by diplomacy. If the money she had spent for the
mother-country were not repaid, her ruin was certain. William Bollan,
English by birth and a son-in-law of Shirley, was sent out to urge the just
claim of the province, and after long and vigorous solicitation, he
succeeded. The full amount, in sterling value, was paid to Massachusetts,
and the expenditures of New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were
also reimbursed. [Footnote: £183,649 to Massachusetts; £16,355 to New
Hampshire; £28,863 to Connecticut; £6,332 to Rhode Island.] The people of
Boston saw twenty-seven of those long, unwieldy trucks which many elders of
the place still remember as used in their youth, rumbling up King Street to
the treasury, loaded with 217 chests of Spanish dollars, and a hundred
barrels of copper coin. A pound sterling was worth eleven pounds of the
old-tenor currency of Massachusetts, and thirty shillings of the new-tenor.
Those beneficent trucks carried enough to buy in at a stroke nine tenths of
the old-tenor notes of the province,--nominally worth above two millions.
A stringent tax, laid on by the Assembly, paid the remaining tenth, and
Massachusetts was restored to financial health.

[Footnote: Palfrey, _New England_, V. 101-109; Shirley, _Report to
the Board of Trade. Bollan to Secretary Willard_, in _Coll. Mass.
Hist. Soc.,_ I. 53; Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass.,_ II. 391-395.
_Letters of Bollan_ in Massachusetts Archives.

It was through the exertions of the much-abused Thomas Hutchinson,
Speaker of the Assembly and historian of Massachusetts, that
the money was used for the laudable purpose of extinguishing the old debt.

Shirley did his utmost to support Bollan in his efforts to obtain
compensation, and after highly praising the zeal and loyalty of the people
of his province, he writes to Newcastle: "Justice, as well as the affection
which I bear to 'em, constrains me to beseech your Grace to recommend their
Case to his Majesty's paternal Care & Tenderness in the Strongest manner."
_Shirley to Newcastle, 6 Nov. 1745._

The English documents on the siege of Louisbourg are many and voluminous.
The Pepperrell Papers and the Belknap Papers, both in the library of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, afford a vast number of contemporary
letters and documents on the subject. The large volume entitled _Siege of
Louisbourg_, in the same repository, contains many more, including a
number of autograph diaries of soldiers and others. To these are to be
added the journals of General Wolcott, James Gibson, Benjamin Cleaves, Seth
Pomeroy, and several others, in print or manuscript, among which is
especially to be noted the journal appended to Shirley's Letter to the Duke
of Newcastle of Oct. 28, 1745, and bearing the names of Pepperrell,
Brigadier Waldo, Colonel Moore, and Lieutenant-Colonels Lothrop and
Gridley, who attest its accuracy. Many papers have also been drawn from the
Public Record Office of London.

Accounts of this affair have hitherto rested, with but slight exceptions,
on English sources alone. The archives of France have furnished useful
material to the foregoing narrative, notably the long report of the
Governor, Duchambon, to the Minister of War, and the letter of the
Intendant, Bigot, to the same personage, within about six weeks after the
surrender. But the most curious French evidence respecting the siege is the
_Lettre d'un Habitant de Louisbourg contenant une Relation exacte &
circonstanciée de la Prise de l'Isle-Royale par les Anglois. A Québec, chez
Guillaume le Sincère, à l'Image de la Vérité_, 1745. This little work,
of eighty-one printed pages, is extremely rare. I could study it only by
having a _literatim_ transcript made from the copy in the Bibliothèque
Nationale, as it was not in the British Museum. It bears the signature B.
L. N., and is dated _à ... ce 28 Août, 1745._ The imprint of Québec,
etc., is certainly a mask, the book having no doubt been printed in France.
It severely criticises Duchambon, and makes him mainly answerable for the
disaster.

For French views of the siege of Louisbourg, _see_ Appendix B.]




CHAPTER XXI.

1745-1747.

DUC D'ANVILLE.

LOUISBOURG AFTER THE CONQUEST.--MUTINY.--PESTILENCE.--STEPHEN
WILLIAMS.--HIS DIARY.--SCHEME OF CONQUERING CANADA.--NEWCASTLE'S
PROMISES.--ALARM IN CANADA.--PROMISES BROKEN.--PLAN AGAINST CROWN
POINT.--STARTLING NEWS.--D'ANVILLE'S FLEET.--LOUISBOURG TO BE
AVENGED.--DISASTERS OF D'ANVILLE.--STORM.--PESTILENCE.--FAMINE.--DEATH OF
D'ANVILLE.--SUICIDE OF THE VICE-ADMIRAL.--RUINOUS FAILURE.--RETURN
VOYAGE.--DEFEAT OF LA JONQUIÈRE.


The troops and inhabitants of Louisbourg were all embarked for France, and
the town was at last in full possession of the victors. The serious-minded
among them--and there were few who did not bear the stamp of hereditary
Puritanism--now saw a fresh proof that they were the peculiar care of an
approving Providence. While they were in camp the weather had been
favorable; but they were scarcely housed when a cold, persistent rain
poured down in floods that would have drenched their flimsy tents and
turned their huts of turf into mud-heaps, robbing the sick of every hope of
recovery. Even now they got little comfort from the shattered tenements of
Louisbourg. The siege had left the town in so filthy a condition that the
wells were infected and the water was poisoned.

The soldiers clamored for discharge, having enlisted to serve only till the
end of the expedition; and Shirley insisted that faith must be kept with
them, or no more would enlist. [Footnote: _Shirley to Newcastle, 27
Sept. 1745._] Pepperrell, much to the dissatisfaction of Warren, sent
home about seven hundred men, some of whom were on the sick list, while the
rest had families in distress and danger on the exposed frontier. At the
same time he begged hard for reinforcements, expecting a visit from the
French and a desperate attempt to recover Louisbourg. He and Warren
governed the place jointly, under martial law, and they both passed half
their time in holding courts-martial; for disorder reigned among the
disgusted militia, and no less among the crowd of hungry speculators, who
flocked like vultures to the conquered town to buy the cargoes of captured
ships, or seek for other prey. The Massachusetts soldiers, whose pay was
the smallest, and who had counted on being at their homes by the end of
July, were the most turbulent; but all alike were on the brink of mutiny.
Excited by their ringleaders, they one day marched in a body to the parade
and threw down their arms; but probably soon picked them up again, as in
most cases the guns were hunting-pieces belonging to those who carried
them. Pepperrell begged Shirley to come to Louisbourg and bring the
mutineers back to duty. Accordingly, on the 16th of August he arrived in a
ship-of-war, accompanied by Mrs. Shirley and Mrs. Warren, wife of the
Commodore. The soldiers duly fell into line to receive him. As it was not
his habit to hide his own merits, he tells the Duke of Newcastle that
nobody but he could have quieted the malcontents,--which is probably true,
as nobody else had power to raise their pay. He made them a speech,
promised them forty shillings in Massachusetts new-tenor currency a month,
instead of twenty-five, and ended with ordering for each man half a pint of
rum to drink the King's health. Though potations so generous might be
thought to promise effects not wholly sedative, the mutineers were brought
to reason, and some even consented to remain in garrison till the next
June. [Footnote: _Shirley to Newcastle, 4 Dec 1745._]

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