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CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
Volume 8
THE GREAT FORTRESS
A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760
By WILLIAM WOOD
TORONTO, 1915
PREFACE
Louisbourg was no mere isolated stronghold which could
be lost or won without affecting the wider issues of
oversea dominion. On the contrary, it was a necessary
link in the chain of waterside posts which connected
France with America by way of the Atlantic, the St
Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. But since
the chain itself and all its other links, and even the
peculiar relation of Louisbourg to the Acadians and the
Conquest, have been fully described elsewhere in the
Chronicles of Canada, the present volume only tries to
tell the purely individual tale. Strange to say, this
tale seems never to have been told before; at least, not
as one continuous whole. Of course, each siege has been
described, over and over again, in many special monographs
as well as in countless books about Canadian history.
But nobody seems to have written any separate work on
Louisbourg showing causes, crises, and results, all
together, in the light of the complete naval and military
proof. So perhaps the following short account may really
be the first attempt to tell the tale of Louisbourg from
the foundation to the fall.
W. W.
59 GRANDE ALLEE,
QUEBEC, 2nd January 1915.
CHAPTER I
THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE
1720-1744
The fortress of Louisbourg arose not from victory but
from defeat; not from military strength but from naval
weakness; not from a new, adventurous 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 of Louis XIV had reached their lowest ebb at
the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It lived a precarious life
of only forty years, from 1720 to 1760. And nothing but
bare ruins were left to mark its grave when it finally
passed, unheeded and unnamed, into the vast dominions of
the conquering British at the Peace of Paris in 1763.
The Treaty of Utrecht narrowed the whole French sea-coast
of America down to the single island of Cape Breton.
Here, after seven years of official hesitation and maritime
exhaustion, Louisbourg was founded to guard the only
harbour the French thought they had a chance of holding.
A medal was struck to celebrate this last attempt to keep
the one remaining seaway open between 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 New England, in much the same way as British
fleets and forts commanded the entrance to the Mediterranean
and threatened the coasts of France and Spain. This hope
seemed flattering enough in time of peace; but it vanished
at each recurrent shock of war, because the Atlantic then
became a hostile desert for the French, while it still
remained a friendly highway for the British.
The first French settlers in Louisbourg came over from
Newfoundland, which had been given up to the British by
the treaty. The fishermen of various nations had frequented
different ports all round these shores for 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 done to make Cape
Breton French. Not only was English Harbour now called
Louisbourg, but St Peter's became Port Toulouse, St Anne's
became Port Dauphin, and the whole island itself was
solemnly christened Ile Royale.
The shores of the St Lawrence up to Quebec and Montreal
were as entirely French as the islands in the Gulf. But
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