Part 13 (1/2)
1755-1763
Removal of the Acadians
By the plan which the Duke of c.u.mberland had ordained and Braddock had announced in the Council at Alexandria, four blows were to be struck at once to force back the French boundaries, lop off the dependencies of Canada, and reduce her from a vast territory to a petty province. The first stroke had failed, and had shattered the hand of the striker; it remains to see what fortune awaited the others.
It was long since a project of purging Acadia of French influence had germinated in the fertile mind of s.h.i.+rley. We have seen in a former chapter the condition of that afflicted province. Several thousands of its inhabitants, wrought upon by intriguing agents of the French Government, taught by their priests that fidelity to King Louis was inseparable from fidelity to G.o.d, and that to swear allegiance to the British Crown was eternal perdition; threatened with plunder and death at the hands of the savages whom the ferocious missionary, Le Loutre, held over them in terror,--had abandoned, sometimes willingly, but oftener under constraint, the fields which they and their fathers had tilled, and crossing the boundary line of the Missaguash, had placed themselves under the French flag planted on the hill of Beausejour.[240]
Here, or in the neighborhood, many of them had remained, wretched and half starved; while others had been transported to Cape Breton, Isle St.
Jean, or the coasts of the Gulf,--not so far, however, that they could not on occasion be used to aid in an invasion of British Acadia.[241]
Those of their countrymen who still lived under the British flag were chiefly the inhabitants of the district of Mines and of the valley of the River Annapolis, who, with other less important settlements, numbered a little more than nine thousand souls. We have shown already, by the evidence of the French themselves, that neither they nor their emigrant countrymen had been oppressed or molested in matters temporal or spiritual, but that the English authorities, recognizing their value as an industrious population, had labored to reconcile them to a change of rulers which on the whole was to their advantage. It has been shown also how, with a heartless perfidy and a reckless disregard of their welfare and safety, the French Government and its agents labored to keep them hostile to the Crown of which it had acknowledged them to be subjects. The result was, that though they did not, like their emigrant countrymen, abandon their homes, they remained in a state of restless disaffection, refused to supply English garrisons with provisions, except at most exorbitant rates, smuggled their produce to the French across the line, gave them aid and intelligence, and sometimes disguised as Indians, robbed and murdered English settlers. By the new-fangled construction of the treaty of Utrecht which the French boundary commissioners had devised,[242] more than half the Acadian peninsula, including nearly all the cultivated land and nearly all the population of French descent, was claimed as belonging to France, though England had held possession of it more than forty years. Hence, according to the political ethics adopted at the time by both nations, it would be lawful for France to reclaim it by force. England, on her part, it will be remembered, claimed vast tracts beyond the isthmus; and, on the same pretext, held that she might rightfully seize them and capture Beausejour, with the other French garrisons that guarded them.
[Footnote 240: See _ante_, Chapter 4.]
[Footnote 241: Rameau (_La France aux Colonies_, I. 63), estimates the total emigration from 1748 to 1755 at 8,600 souls,--which number seems much too large. This writer, though vehemently anti-English, gives the following pa.s.sage from a letter of a high French official: ”que les Acadiens emigres et en grande misere comptaient se retirer a Quebec et demander des terres, mais il conviendrait mieux qu'ils restent ou ils sont, afin d'avoir le voisinage de l'Acadie bien peuple et defriche, pour approvisionner l'Isle Royale [_Cape Breton_] et tomber en cas de guerre sur l'Acadie.” Rameau, I. 133.]
[Footnote 242: _Supra_, p. 102.]
On the part of France, an invasion of the Acadian peninsula seemed more than likely. Honor demanded of her that, having incited the Acadians to disaffection, and so brought on them the indignation of the English authorities, she should intervene to save them from the consequences.
Moreover the loss of the Acadian peninsula had been gall and wormwood to her; and in losing it she had lost great material advantages. Its possession was necessary to connect Canada with the Island of Cape Breton and the fortress of Louisbourg. Its fertile fields and agricultural people would furnish subsistence to the troops and garrisons in the French maritime provinces, now dependent on supplies illicitly brought by New England traders, and liable to be cut off in time of war when they were needed most. The harbors of Acadia, too, would be invaluable as naval stations from which to curb and threaten the northern English colonies. Hence the intrigues so a.s.siduously practised to keep the Acadians French at heart, and ready to throw off British rule at any favorable moment. British officers believed that should a French squadron with a sufficient force of troops on board appear in the Bay of Fundy, the whole population on the Basin of Mines and along the Annapolis would rise in arms, and that the emigrants beyond the isthmus, armed and trained by French officers, would come to their aid. This emigrant population, famis.h.i.+ng in exile, looked back with regret to the farms they had abandoned; and, prevented as they were by Le Loutre and his colleagues from making their peace with the English, they would, if confident of success, have gladly joined an invading force to regain their homes by reconquering Acadia for Louis XV. In other parts of the continent it was the interest of France to put off hostilities; if Acadia alone had been in question, it would have been her interest to precipitate them.
Her chances of success were good. The French could at any time send troops from Louisbourg or Quebec to join those maintained upon the isthmus; and they had on their side of the lines a force of militia and Indians amounting to about two thousand, while the Acadians within the peninsula had about an equal number of fighting men who, while calling themselves neutrals, might be counted on to join the invaders. The English were in no condition to withstand such an attack. Their regular troops were scattered far and wide through the province, and were nowhere more than equal to the local requirement; while of militia, except those of Halifax, they had few or none whom they dared to trust.
Their fort at Annapolis was weak and dilapidated, and their other posts were mere stockades. The strongest place in Acadia was the French fort of Beausejour, in which the English saw a continual menace. Their apprehensions were well grounded. Duquesne, governor of Canada, wrote to Le Loutre, who virtually shared the control of Beausejour with Vergor, its commandant: ”I invite both yourself and M. Vergor to devise a plausible pretext for attacking them [_the English_] vigorously.”[243]
Three weeks after this letter was written, Lawrence, governor of Nova Scotia, wrote to s.h.i.+rley from Halifax: ”Being well informed that the French have designs of encroaching still farther upon His Majesty's rights in this province, and that they propose, the moment they have repaired the fortifications of Louisbourg, to attack our fort at Chignecto [_Fort Lawrence_], I think it high time to make some effort to drive them from the north side of the Bay of Fundy.”[244] This letter was brought to Boston by Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, who was charged by Lawrence to propose to s.h.i.+rley the raising of two thousand men in New England for the attack of Beausejour and its dependent forts. Almost at the moment when Lawrence was writing these proposals to s.h.i.+rley, s.h.i.+rley was writing with the same object to Lawrence, enclosing a letter from Sir Thomas Robinson, concerning which he said: ”I construe the contents to be orders to us to act in concert for taking _any_ advantages to drive the French of Canada out of Nova Scotia. If that is your sense of them, and your honor will be pleased to let me know whether you want any and what a.s.sistance to enable you to execute the orders, I will endeavor to send you such a.s.sistance from this province as you shall want.”[245]
[Footnote 243: _Duquesne a Le Loutre, 15 Oct. 1754_; extract in _Public Doc.u.ments of Nova Scotia_, 239.]
[Footnote 244: _Lawrence to s.h.i.+rley, 5 Nov. 1754. Instructions of Lawrence to Monckton, 1 Nov. 1754_.]
[Footnote 245: _s.h.i.+rley to Lawrence, 7 Nov. 1754_.]
The letter of Sir Thomas Robinson, of which a duplicate had already been sent to Lawrence, was written in answer to one of s.h.i.+rley informing the Minister that the Indians of Nova Scotia, prompted by the French, were about to make an attack on all the English settlements east of the Kennebec; whereupon Robinson wrote: ”You will without doubt have given immediate intelligence thereof to Colonel Lawrence, and will have concerted the properest measures with him for taking all possible advantage in Nova Scotia itself from the absence of those Indians, in case Mr. Lawrence shall have force enough to attack the forts erected by the French in those parts, without exposing the English settlements; and I am particularly to acquaint you that if you have not already entered into such a concert with Colonel Lawrence, it is His Majesty's pleasure that you should immediately proceed thereupon.”[246]
[Footnote 246: _Robinson to s.h.i.+rley, 5 July, 1754_.]
The Indian raid did not take place; but not the less did s.h.i.+rley and Lawrence find in the Minister's letter their authorization for the attack of Beausejour. s.h.i.+rley wrote to Robinson that the expulsion of the French from the forts on the isthmus was a necessary measure of self-defence; that they meant to seize the whole country as far as Mines Basin, and probably as far as Annapolis, to supply their Acadian rebels with land; that of these they had, without reckoning Indians, fourteen hundred fighting men on or near the isthmus, and two hundred and fifty more on the St. John, with whom, aided by the garrison of Beausejour, they could easily take Fort Lawrence; that should they succeed in this, the whole Acadian population would rise in arms, and the King would lose Nova Scotia. We should antic.i.p.ate them, concludes s.h.i.+rley, and strike the first blow.[247]
[Footnote 247: _s.h.i.+rley to Robinson, 8 Dec. 1754. Ibid., 24 Jan. 1755_.
The Record Office contains numerous other letters of s.h.i.+rley on the subject. ”I am obliged to your Honor for communicating to me the French Memoire, which, with other reasons, puts it out of doubt that the French are determined to begin an offensive war on the peninsula as soon as ever they shall think themselves strengthened enough to venture up it, and that they have thoughts of attempting it in the ensuing spring. I enclose your Honor extracts from two letters from Annapolis Royal, which show that the French inhabitants are in expectation of its being begun in the spring.” _s.h.i.+rley to Lawrence, 6 Jan. 1755_.]
He opened his plans to his a.s.sembly in secret session, and found them of one mind with himself. Preparation was nearly complete, and the men raised for the expedition, before the Council at Alexandria, recognized it as a part of a plan of the summer campaign.
The French fort of Beausejour, mounted on its hill between the marshes of Missaguash and Tantemar, was a regular work, pentagonal in form, with solid earthern ramparts, bomb-proofs, and an armament of twenty-four cannon and one mortar. The commandant, Duchambon de Vergor, a captain in the colony regulars, was a dull man of no education, of stuttering speech, unpleasing countenance, and doubtful character. He owed his place to the notorious Intendant, Bigot, who it is said, was in his debt for disreputable service in an affair of gallantry, and who had ample means of enabling his friends to enrich themselves by defrauding the King. Beausejour was one of those plague-spots of official corruption which dotted the whole surface of New France. Bigot, sailing for Europe in the summer of 1754, wrote thus to his confederate: ”Profit by your place, my dear Vergor; clip and cut--you are free to do what you please--so that you can come soon to join me in France and buy an estate near me.”[248] Vergor did not neglect his opportunities. Supplies in great quant.i.ties were sent from Quebec for the garrison and the emigrant Acadians. These last got but a small part of them. Vergor and his confederates sent the rest back to Quebec, or else to Louisbourg, and sold them for their own profit to the King's agents there, who were also in collusion with him.
[Footnote 248: _Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_. This letter is also mentioned in another contemporary doc.u.ment, _Memoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie_.]
Vergor, however, did not reign alone. Le Loutre, by force of energy, capacity, and pa.s.sionate vehemence, held him in some awe, and divided his authority. The priest could count on the support of Duquesne, who had found, says a contemporary, that ”he promised more than he could perform, and that he was a knave,” but who nevertheless felt compelled to rely upon him for keeping the Acadians on the side of France. There was another person in the fort worthy of notice. This was Thomas Pichon, commissary of stores, a man of education and intelligence, born in France of an English mother. He was now acting the part of a traitor, carrying on a secret correspondence with the commandant of Fort Lawrence, and acquainting him with all that pa.s.sed at Beausejour. It was partly from this source that the hostile designs of the French became known to the authorities of Halifax, and more especially the proceedings of ”Moses,” by which name Pichon always designated Le Loutre, because he pretended to have led the Acadians from the land of bondage.[249]
[Footnote 249: Pichon, called also Tyrrell from the name of his mother, was author of _Genuine Letters and Memoirs relating to Cape Breton_,--a book of some value. His papers are preserved at Halifax, and some of them are printed in the _Public Doc.u.ments of Nova Scotia_.]
These exiles, who cannot be called self-exiled, in view of the outrageous means used to force most of them from their homes, were in a deplorable condition. They lived in constant dread of Le Loutre, backed by Vergor and his soldiers. The savage missionary, bad as he was, had in him an ingredient of honest fanaticism, both national and religious; though hatred of the English held a large share in it. He would gladly, if he could, have forced the Acadians into a permanent settlement on the French side of the line, not out of love for them, but in the interest of the cause with which he had identified his own ambition. His efforts had failed. There was not land enough for their subsistence and that of the older settlers; and the suffering emigrants pined more and more for their deserted farms. Thither he was resolved that they should not return. ”If you go,” he told them, ”you will have neither priests nor sacraments, but will die like miserable wretches.”[250] The a.s.sertion was false. Priests and sacraments had never been denied them. It is true that Daudin, priest of Pisiquid, had lately been sent to Halifax for using insolent language to the commandant, threatening him with an insurrection of the inhabitants, and exciting them to sedition; but on his promise to change conduct, he was sent back to his paris.h.i.+oners.[251]