The Great Fortress A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760

turous spirit of attack, but from a half-despairing hope of keeping one last foothold by the sea. It was not begun till after the fortunes o

it finally passed, unheeded and unnamed, into the vast domin

n Old France and New. Its legend ran thus: Ludovicoburgum Fundatum et Munitum, M.DCC.XX ('Louisbourg Founded and Fortified, 1720'). Its obverse bore the profile of the young Louis XV, whose statesmen hoped they had now established a French Gibraltar in America, where French fleets and forts would command the straits leading into the St Lawrence and threaten the coast of Ne

centuries; and, by the irony of fate, the new French capital of Cape Breton was founded at the entrance to the bay which had long been known as English Harbour. Everything that rechristening could do, however, was

the French Newfoundlanders, who came in a body from Plaisance (now Placentia), the Acadians preferred to stay at home. In 1717 an effort was made to bring some of them into Louisbourg. But it only succeeded in attracting the merest handful. On the whole, the French authorities preferred leaving the Acadians as they were, in case a change in the fortunes of war might bring them once more under the fleurs-de-lis, when the connection by land between Quebec and the sea would

e time of the Cession of Canada to the British fifty years later, but with a tendency for the vast British preponderance to increase still more. Canada naturally had neither men nor money to spare for Louisbourg; so the whole cost of building the fortress, thirty million livres, came direct from France. This sum was then the equiva

ke Louisbourg, where there was no social life whatever-nothing but fishermen, smugglers, petty traders, a discontented garrison, generally half composed of foreigners, and a band of dishonest, second-rate officials, whose one idea was how to get rich and get home. The inspectors who were sent out either failed in their duty and

But the actual execution was hampered, at every turn, by want of firmness at headquarters and want of honest labour on the spot. Sea sand was plentiful, worthless, and cheap. So it was used for the mortar, with most disastrous results. The stone was hewn from a quarry of porphyritic trap near b

ssels; a great port of call between France, Canada, and the French West Indies; and a harbour of refuge in peace and war. But the New England shipping was doing the best trade at Louisbourg, and doing it in double contraband, within five years of the foundation. Cod caught by Frenchmen from Louisbourg itself, French wines and brandy brought out from France, tobacco and sugar brought north

bourg. The traders shared the profits of the smuggling. But the intend

al bondage to the traders, who took good care not to let accounts get evened up. A happier class of fishermen made up the engages, who were paid by government to 'play settler' for a term of years, during which th

iver. James Gibson, a Boston merchant and militiaman, who served against Louisbourg in 1745, was much taken by the appearance of an establishment 'at the mouth of a large salmon fishery,' by one 'very handsome house, with two large barns, two large gardens, and fine fields of corn,' and by another with 'six rooms on a floor and well furnished.' He adds that 'in

shores. But they were a race of gallant, industrious landsmen at home, with neither the wish nor the aptitude for a nautical life abroad. They could not have failed to see that there was plenty of timber in some parts of the island, and that the soil was fit to bear good crops of grain in others. A little prospecting would also have s

n, and of its strength and weakness in the coming clash of arms, depended on six naval, military, and governmental factors, each one of which must be co

ls detested colonial service, especially in a place like Louisbourg, which was everything the average Frenchman hated most. This British failure to understand a national trait, which is still as strongly marked as ever, accounts for a good deal of the exaggerated belief in the

apped each other, and all disputes had to be referred to Quebec, where the functions of another governor and another intendant also overlapped each other. If no decision could be reached at Quebec, and the question at issue was one of sufficient importance,

ving a definite emergency order under his hand and seal. But, if the emergency could not be proved, this laid him open to great risks from the intendant's subsequent recriminations before the Superior Council in Quebec or the Supreme Council in France. The only way such a system could be worked at all was either by corrupt collusion or by superhuman co-operation between the two conflicting parties, or by appointing a man of genius who could make every other official discharge his proper dut

ick also offered what might be euphemistically called 'business opportunities' to enterprising members. True, there was no police to execute its decrees; and at one time a punctilious resident complained that 'there was not even a common hangman, nor a jail, nor even a tormentor to rack the criminals or inflict other appropriate tortures.' But appeals took a long time and cost much money; so even the officials of the bailiwick could pick up a living by threats

or the ordinary soldier to go to in his spare time. The officers felt the want of a larger outlook even more than the men did; and neither man nor officer ever went to Louisbourg if he could help it. When Montcalm, the greatest Frenchman the New World ever saw, came out to Canada, there was eager competition among the troops at home to join his army in the field. Officers paid large sums for the honour of exchanging into any

t emergency at Louisbourg. Between thirteen and fourteen hundred men were got under arms for the siege of 1745. Those who lived in Louisbourg had the advantage of a little slack discipline

chance of lifting scalps from careless stragglers or ambushing an occasional small party gone astray. As in Canada, so in Cape Breton, the Indians naturally sided with the French, who disturbed them less and treated them better than the British did. The British, who enjoyed the inestimable advantage of superior sea-power, had more goods to exchange. But in every other respect the French were very much preferred. The handful of French sent out

le Louisbourg was an occasional convenience, it had also peculiar dangers for a squadron from the weaker of two hostile navies, as squadrons from France were likely to be. The British could make for a dozen different harbours on the coast. The French could make for only th

nt to replace. Dunkirk had been sold by Charles II to Louis XIV, who made it a formidable naval base commanding the straits of Dover. When the Treaty of Utrecht compelled its demolition, the French tried to redress the balance a little by building similar works in America on a very much smaller scale, with a much more purely defensive purpose, and as an altogether subsidiary undertaking. Dunkirk was 'a pistol held at England's head' because it was an

ng out from the south-western peninsula, on which the fortress stood. This low, nubbly tongue of land was roughly triangular. It measured about three-quarters of a mile on its longest side, facing the harbour, over half a mile on the land side, facing the enemy's army, and a good deal under half a mile on the side facing the

time of danger to prevent the enemy from landing in Gabarus Bay, which ran for miles south-west of Louisbourg. But the garrison, even with the militia, was never strong enough to keep the enemy at arm's length from any on

he ditch. There were embrasures for one hundred and forty-eight guns all round; though not more than ninety were ever actually mounted. On the seaward face Louisbourg was not so strongly fortified; but in the centre of this face there were a deep ditch and high wall, with bastions on each immediate flank, and ligh

ars later he announced the official inauguration of the lighthouse on the 1st of April. In 1736 the chief item was the engineer's report on the walls. Next year the great anxiety was about a dangerous famine, with all its attendant distress for the many and its shameless profits for the few. On November 23, 1744, reinforcements and provisions were asked for, because intelligence had been received that the New Englanders were going to blockade Louisbou

n remote and thoroughly uncongenial countries. Louisbourg was remote, weeks away from exchanges with Quebec, months from exchanges with any part of France or Switzerland. And what other foreign station could have been more thoroughly uncongenial, except, perhaps, a convict station in the tropics? Bad quarters were endurable in Paris or even in the provinces, where five minutes' walk would take one into something pleasanter. Bad fortifications would inspire less apprehension anywhere in F