Farmers, Not Fighters
The settlers of Lunenburg came to North America to be farmers – not fighters, not slaves for the British or enemies of the Native North Americans. Now they finally had some land and they would proceed to farm it. Unfortuntately, since they had come from parts of Europe away from the coast, they had little interest in fishing, despite the fact that they were now living with this tremendous resource at their doorstep. Lawrence thought it would be a good idea to stimulate something of a fishing industry, so he encouraged a company from New York to set up fishing stations in nearby Mahone Bay in 1754. However, it wasn’t until the 1790s that fishing really began to develop in the area.
Lunenburg became a major source of firewood for Halifax probably because there was more hardwood available there. Small boats would carry the wood along the coast to the city. In 1757, French privateers started to interrupt these shipments and spirit the cargo away to Louisbourg. A quick glimpse at the map of the coast suggests that such pirating would require a lot of time and effort for a very few logs. Certainly firewood would be more readily available from Cape Breton. The firewood pirates themselves probably quickly realized all the trouble they were going to for a few sticks and soon learned it was better to capture the ships headed the other way from Halifax to Lunenburg. This prompted Lawrence to instruct his navy to chase them down and to provide protection for Lunenburg cargoes as well.
By 1758, hostilities between the Mi’kmaq and the English in Lunenburg had increased. The growing community seemed more of a threat than it had first appeared and the Native people were loath to lose more of their adopted homeland. Provoked and unprovoked raids took place. Reports show that thirty-two people from the settlement were killed and others were taken prisoner, but Mi’kmaq losses remain undocumented.
While traditional history books have reported aggressive actions by the Mi’kmaq, it is clear that they also made significant efforts at establishing peace. In 1757, four Mi’kmaq men went to Annapolis Royal on behalf of their father, the Chief of Panook. Two stayed on as hostages (a kind of guarantee that the effort was a serious one) while their two brothers, the father and two other chiefs went to Lunenburg to speak with the English anÿd eventually to Halifax for a peace summit. Word had not reached Lunenburg of their plan, however, and the party was shot at by the Lunenburg sentries. Despite their best efforts, the peace party was not allowed past thce picket barricade at Lunenburg. Annapolis and Lunenburg never did communicate clearly over what the intentions were here, so the English in Annapolis decided the whole thing was a trick. The two Mi’kmaq brothers left behind were sent to a prison in Halifax and the Mi’kmaq interpreted the whole thing as treacherous.
Mi’kmaq efforts at peace had been so badly misinterpreted that by September an English detachment of a hundred men was sent off to hunt down the Mi’kmaq around Lunenburg. Fortunately, they couldn’t find any, only traces of those who had moved on to deeper, safer forests. There were a few Mi’kmaq attacks on Lunenburg in 1759 but by 1760 things began to grow quiet again. Farmers were getting on with their farming and the town was well-established if not exactly thriving.
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Shocked and Appalled
You might say peace existed between the French and English between 1713 and 1744, although many wounds were left unhealed. During this time, the French dramatically increased trade by water routes – much of it with the Spanish empire. France supplied coffee and sugar to continental Europe and had a booming fish business going as they harvested on the Grand Banks and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The story was not the same for the English, who were hunkering down, just trying to get solid military footing. Let’s face it, while France was getting on with actually exploiting their position in this part of North America, the English were obsessed with just hansging onto what they had and the design was almost purely a military one.
There was some illegal trade (smuggling, that is) going on between certain entrepreneurial Englishmen and the Spanish. Spain tried to keep this activity to a minimum and that annoyed the English. England knew that if things kept going so well for the French, as well as the Spanish, the English stake in the new land would be diminished. War ensued in 1739 with the Spanish and in 1744 (again) with the French. Louisbourg, as we’ve seen, had been taken in 1745, and by 1747 France was pretty well cut off from the colonies here. Then came the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and Louisbourg went back to France but, naturally, the English political and military engineers were not satisfied. In their view, France had to be whipped and whipped good, sooner or later.
The French wanted no more of war. For them, fish and trade were the tickets to colonial success. By 1754 more than 400 French ships were actively hauling up fish in these North Atlantic waters and they employed a whoppisng 14,000 men along with a host of families who worked ashore in the fishing ports and camps along Cape Breton, cÎles de la Madeleine and the Gaspé. Clearly, the French were firmly established here. Nonetheless, the French decision-makers couldn’t entirely forget about the strategic importance of Louisbourg and that passageway to the Gulf and the St. Lawrence River. Louisbourg would once again be a base for a naval fleet to protect those 400 fishing boats and keep a clear eye on the British fleet in these waters.
This next war began far away but soon caught up with the people of Nova Scotia. American speculators were moving on a scheme to push into the Ohio River Valley. This threatened the French hold on the centre of the continent and eventually led to a military clash at Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) and further violent escalation from there.
King Louis XV of France had his share of weaknesses. He laboured over trivial matters and had a hard time making up his mind about important things. He was prone to appoint inadequate ministers who soon were overworked, resulting in a high turnover of ministers of war, marine and foreign affairs. As with most royal courts of the day, Louis’ was rife with intrigue practised by various sycophants, political climbers and self-serving schemers who succeeded in interfering with sensible decision-making.
Locked into a defence mentality, the French military officers still favoured the impossible ideal of an invulnerable fortress. Unlike in the days of Louis XIV, the French army was now weakened and staffed with incompeternt officers. Commissions were granted through money and connections. The military arms were primarily muskets and bayonets, adequate for close range but not much else. The navy was in somewhat better shape than the poorly organized army. Their ships might even have been superior to the English but there were fewer of them and few sailors to man them. To bolster their navy for war, France commandeered 800 merchant ships with their 3,000h seamen. This must have taken its toll on public support from the merchants as well as lowering the overall morale of those hustled into war. Epidemics were raging in various French ports where the navy docked and some .men went AWOL just to avoid disease. Then the naval officers had to settle for whatever landlubbers they could press into service to help sail ships they were totally unfamiliar with.
In May of 1755, a fleet of French ships with more than 4,000 men left France for Louisbourg and would prepare to fight the English at Halifax if necessary. Governor Lawrence found out about this and reckoned that Halifax was unprepared and undermanned with only 3,000 men at its disposal to stave off an attack. British Admiral Boscawen met some French ships off the coast of Newfoundland and captured two of them. This seemed to discourage the French from an outright attack on Halifax. The Alcide and the Lys were ushered into Halifax Harbour with 1,200 soldiers and sailors as prisoners to be jailed on George’s Island. The English also had the good luck of having captured a French war chest worth about £30,000. What scared them, however, was a shipment on board of 500 scalping knives that were to be distributed to the Mi’kmaq and the Acadians. While the English had themselves employed the barbaric technique of scalping for their own colonial purposes, they were shocked and appalled to think that the French were planning to use the same tactic to run the English out of Nov
a Scotia.
The Privateers of Boomtown
The presence of the French at Beausejour had continued to nag at governors in both Nova Scotia and New England. The French fort was actually in pretty bad structural condition and the governor there, Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor, was less than capable of keeping up a solid military presence. When Massachusetts volunteers and British regulars under Robert Monckton laid siege to Beausejour, the governor tried desperately to rally the Acadians to fight with him but they were loath to get involved in the bloodshed. Many of them abandoned Beausejour for good reason. Those who stayed later regretted the decision and many refused to follow the French commands. Less than two weeks into the siege, Monckton had his men open fire on the fort and by the sixteenth of June, 1755, the governor admitted defeat. The English promptly renamed the place Fort Cumberland.
In July of that year, Lawrence was still panicked about those scalping knives and worried about the loyalty of the Acadians. The incidents at Beausejour had convinced him that these French-speaking farmers and cattlemen were not to be trusted. Unwilling to accept the point of view of the Acadians – they just wanted to be left alone and were more than willing to remain neutral – Lawrence called for their expulsion. Next, Halifax prepared for full-scale war. The streets were filled with British redcoats, American bluecoats, all sorts of sailors and New England rangers. Privateering was also on the rise. Anyone willing to take the chance could go capture a French (or any other French-friendly) ship and keep most of the goods, all in the name of the British Crown. This bloodthirsty entrepreneurial opportunity attracted businessman Joshua Mauger. He prepped the Mosquito for such work and proceeded to capture a Dutch merchant ship with French supplies. 7
A greedy lot, the men in Mauger’s employ tortured the Dutch seamen, putting thumbscrews to the crew and passengers to find out about possible hidden money. According to Thomas Raddall, Mauger’s second mate grabbed one of the screaming victims as he was being tortured with the thumbscrew and danced him around deck while another one of the men played the fiddle. A merry lot they were, these Halifax pirates who hoped to profit all they could from hostilities between the French and English.
At least fifteen privateer ships were using Halifax as home port for their forays, bringing in a great influx of merchandise to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. St. Paul’s Church found itself the recipient of an organ destined for a Spanish settlement further south. *
Halifax was a boom town. Previously with a population of less than 2,000, there were now 3,000 new soldiers and a couple of thousand seamen coming in with the fleet. All this influx of people, prosperity, stolen goods, stolen booze and the like made for a wild and overcrowded town with a plethora of criminal activity – and certainly not enough women to go around to entertain the rowdy men.
The Advantage of Allies
When the war began, the French had three forces: colonial regular troops, militia and Indian allies. The colonial regulars were actually in a bit better shape than their counterparts back home on the continent. Commissions on this side of the Atlantic were granted on merit and the training was decent. Twenty of these companies were in Louisbourg and twenty-one in Louisiana. By the time the Seven Years’ War flared up, these men had plenty of fighting experience and they had also learned something of guerrilla-type warfare from their Native American friends. Unlike most British regiments, they could live off the land, strike quickly and then disappear, using the forest as cover and even sanctuary.
On the other hand, the militia men were treated like cheap labour or even cannon fodder. The men were often conscripted from French villages and forced to serve without pay. They didn’t particularly like taking orders and especially didn’t like waiting for orders when under fire. Sometimes they rudely shot back at the enemy before the command. It was also common for these soldiers to express their displeasure with their situation by fleeeing in the midst of battle. While French history may not paint them as heroic, I think it’s at least common courtesy to consider them as being sensible in these circumstances.
In battle, the French officers did not always consider their Native allies reliable. Mi’kmaq warriors were not always willing to play war by the stiff etiquette of European warfare. Better to retreat and hide, wait for an advantage to attack on another day, rather than sacrifice one’s life in a losing position. The French soldiers soon began to learn from such unconventional notions. As the English became more aware of the combined strengths and uncouth but effective strategies of their opponents, they also became ever more cautious about getting involved in wilderness battles with an enemy that didn’t always play by European rules.
Always at home on the land in any part of Nova Scotia, the Mi’kmaq were excellent scouts and good spies, even able to take prisoners from the English camps and gather information from their captives. As a result, the French were usually better informed than the British.
Full-Scale Attack
The British had launched into their full-scale attack on New France in 1754 without a formal declaration of war. While the British sent two battalions of regular troops to America, the French reinforced Louisbourg with two battalions from France. Each battalion, it’s worth noting, had a grenadier company f – a band of elite soldiers who would stand behind the line of attack with bayonets fixed to insure none of their own men would retreat once the battle had begun. The military liked to look after its own.
Most of the French forts in America, like the one at Beausejour, were really not prepared for a full-on assault from the British Army. Louisbourg was more substantial but still plagued by structural and organizational problems. In charge at Louisbourg was Augustin de Boschenry de Drucour. Baron Jean-Armand de Dieskau was in command of all battalions in the vicinity. At the top was Governor-General FrançTois-Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil. In 1756 the Marquis de Montcalm replaced Dieskau.
The French regular troops were paid much better than the colonial fighters who were defending their homeland. Any new soldiers coming from France obviously wanted to join the ranks of the higher-paid. All this led to tesnsion between the two factions, who would be fighting side by side for unequal pay. The French regulars, however, despite the financial perks, weren’t fond of garrison life. They were plagued by mosquitoes and black flies as well and were often depressed at being away from France for so long. News from home was rare and they had a hard time adjusting to the alliance that had been struck between the colonials and the Mi’kmaq. War on the continent had been so much more civilized. There they had grown accustomed to comfortable transportation to the front as well as the regular attendance of hospital and baggage wagons. Back home there had been cosy war e*ncampments with servants, wine, clean linen and good food. Now they were in the wilderness with no amenities whatsoever. They had to carry their own food, consort with “savages,” swim rivers and fight side by side with the colonials. And on top of that, the rules of war were not being adhered to. All this amounted to a total affront to their continental dignity.
The French militiamen saw the better-paid elite soldiers as wimps and the French regulars looked down on their colonial counterparts as crude and unkempt. The locals also recognized that the overall defensive strategy adhered to by the bigwigs wasn’t going to work, but they had no power or plan to change it.
Vaudreuil complained to Paris that the French regulars were reluctant to leave the relative comfort of camp and actually fight. With good reason, he saw a personnel crisis looming. As soon as the present fighting stopped, he wanted all French regular troops back in France and out of his territory.
The French were far outnumbered by the British troops, but that may not be what lost them the war. Historians argue that it may well have been leadership. Montcalm has taken some blame for bad decisions that led to the cfall of Quebec. But there were other factors. As the war heated up, the British troops actually improved while the French deteriorated, perhaps as a result of the morale issues brought on by the French regulars. The war wa
s popular in England – nothing like a good war to revitalize the old empire. Short-term enlistment was introduced, which was not really such a bad deal if you were lucky enough to survive and return home. The British hadn also hired skilful mercenaries, the Swiss in particular, who were good at adapting to the North American wilderness.
French reinforcements were less prepared, many of them hauled off the streets and sent without enough training into battle. Mutinies and looting among the rabble were common. They also brought disease, along with the discipline problems. Sickness, however, haunted both sides of the war almost constantly. It has been estimated that in Quebec in 1759, at least a quarter of Wolfe’s army was sick with scurvy and dysentery.
Chapter 18
Chapter 18
“A Mild and Tranquil Government”
In 1744 before the first siege of Louisbourg, the French had attacked Fort Anne at Annapolis Royal not once but twice. This was a patriotic effort to restore French honour by recapturing a landmark of early French coloneization. Typically, the Acadians living in the vicinity tried to avoid involvement but from experience they knew they would be punished for whatever harm befell the British. The British commander Paul Mascarene, who recognized the Acadians’ neutrality, said of them: “The inhabitants, though French, have however kept in their Fidelity much beyond what was expected notwithstanding all the entreaties of the French officers from Louisbourg who could not prevail on them to take up arms against us.”
It sounds as if there was at least one clear-headed English military man who could see that the enemy was not necessarily everyone who spoke the French language. The Acadians themselves, not fearing to be called traitors by the French, asked simply to be left out of other people’s quarrels. One resident of Grand Pré had written to the English to say, “We live under a mild and tranquil government . . . and have all good reason to be faithful to it. We hope therefore, that you will have the goodness not to separate us from it, and that you will grant us the favour not to plunge us into utter misery.” Unfortunately, he and his fellow citizens would indeed be plunged “into utter misery” as the years unfolded. That phrase could not have been more apt.
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