In a very rare display of joint effort the British North Americans managed to get this establishment into their possession in 1745.
Plan of Louisbourg, published at the conclusion of the French &
Indian War, from Bellin’s Petit Atlas Maritime. The map shows major
fortifications and includes a key locating 14 important points of interest.
Louisbourg was originally settled in 1713, and initially
called Havre à l’Anglois. Subsequently, the fishing port grew to become a major
commercial port and a strongly defended fortress. The fortifications eventually
surrounded the town. The walls were constructed mainly between 1720 and 1740.
By the mid-1740s Louisbourg, named for Louis XIV of France,
was one of the most extensive (and expensive) European fortifications
constructed in North America. It was supported by two smaller garrisons on Île
Royale located at present-day St. Peter’s and Englishtown. The Fortress of
Louisbourg suffered key weaknesses, since it was erected on low-lying ground
commanded by nearby hills and its design was directed mainly toward sea-based
assaults, leaving the land-facing defences relatively weak. A third weakness
was that it was a long way from France or Quebec, from which reinforcements
might be sent.
Louisbourg was first captured by New England based British
colonists in 1745, and was a major bargaining chip in the negotiations leading
to the 1748 treaty ending the War of the Austrian Succession. It was returned
to the French in exchange for border towns in what is today Belgium. It was
captured again in 1758 by British forces in the Seven Years’ War, after which
its fortifications were systematically destroyed by British engineers.
Even counting in the St Lawrence settlements, the people of
French Canada amounted to seventy thousand or less at the time of the Seven
Years War, which put them at a numerical disadvantage of something like twenty
to one compared with the British Americans to the south. Until almost the very
end, however, the Canadians maintained a clear superiority in mobility and
military prowess over the British – seemingly incredible assets which they owed
to a greater centralisation of control (despite notorious corruption in high
places), their skill at managing the canoe and the musket, the facility of
water transport, and their generally good relations with the Indians.
In contrast, the open but far more thickly-settled British
colonies of the eastern seaboard grew at the slow pace of self-sufficient
agricultural communities. They were boxed into the north by the nations of the
Iroquois confederation and their French associates, and to the west by the
Appalachians. There was little sign of common purpose among the British
colonies. Indeed, out of all the expeditions mounted by the British in the
earlier wars the only ones which bore lasting fruits were the enterprises which
wrested New Amsterdam (New York) from the Dutch in 1664, and gained Port Royal (Annapolis
Royal) and the mastery of Acadia in 1710. Louis XIV had to renounce Acadia (a
lightly settled coastal province) and the great island of Newfoundland at the
Peace of Utrecht in 1713.
Building a Fortress
The French appreciated that they would have to take fresh
measures to safeguard the seaward approaches to the St Lawrence. Already in
1706 an anonymous memorandum had urged the government to set up a fortified
colony on lIe Royale (Cape Breton Island), which formed the southern shore of
the entrance to the Gulf of St Lawrence:
The proposed
establishment will concentrate all the fisheries in the hands of the French and
deny them to the English altogether; it will defend the colonies of Canada,
Newfoundland and Acadia against all the enterprises of the English … and ruin
their colony at Boston by excluding them from this great tract of land; it will
give refuge to our crippled vessels … it will promote Canadian trade and
facilitate the export of its grain and other produce; it will furnish the royal
arsenals with masts, yards, timbers and planks. (McLennan, 1957, 30-1)
The Conseil Royal decided in favour of the thing in 1715.
The first small band of settlers came ashore in the following year, and the
chief engineer of Canada, Jean-Francois du Verger de Verville began a series of
lengthy reconnaissances. In 1721 work finally began on the new fortress of Louisbourg.
The chosen site was on the east coast of the island at Havre al’Anglais, a
roadstead capable of sheltering an entire French fleet, which might then bottle
up any British ships that sailed into the St Lawrence. Verville planted the
town on a peninsula, and closed off the neck by a perimeter of two full
bastions, three curtains, and two half bastions – one on each of the seaward flanks.
A highly original feature of the design was the way the full bastion to the
right, looking from the town (Bastion du Roi) was formed into a miniature
citadel with gorge wall, barracks, governor’s lodging and chapel. The one
factor which the French left out of their calculations was the absence
ofanything which could be termed a ‘building season’. The fog and rain
prevented the mortar from drying out during the summer, and the imprisoned
water froze every winter, with devastating results to the masonry. Verville
disliked the Canadian climate intensely, and the Canadians still more, and he
spent every winter in the comfort of France. Thus Louisbourg absorbed immense
sums of money, without ever being in good repair, and Louis XV complained that
he almost expected to see the ramparts of this costly ‘Dunkirk of America’
rising above the horizon of France.
In a very rare display of joint effort the British North
Americans managed to get this establishment into their possession in 1745. The
canny and popular merchant William Pepperell gathered 4,000 troops from the New
England colonies (which was a considerable achievement in its own right) and
sailed to Cape Breton Island in the company of Commodore Warren and 1,000
marines. The many seamen and backwoodsmen proved to be an immense Lhelp in
building the siege batteries, though somebody complained that the force was ‘in
great want of good gunners that have a disposition to be sober in the daytime’
(ibid., 152). There were no engineers with the expedition at all (until two
officers arrived from Annapolis on 5 June), and the French were perplexed by
the very irregularity and unpredictability of the conduct of the siege.
Louisbourg fell on 17 June after six weeks of attack.
The new governor, Commodore Charles Knowles, had no very
high opinion of any kind of fortress as a prize: ‘Neither the coast of Acadia
nor any of the harbours in Newfoundland (except St Johns and Placentia) are
fortified, and these but triflingly, and yet we always be masters of the cod
fisheries for that year whether there be a Louisbourg or not’ (ibid., 175).
Indeed, the British government was not disinclined to listen to the instances
of the French, who at the peace conference at Aix in 1748 were determined to
regain Louisbourg at almost any price. The Comte de Maurepas, the minister of
marine, viewed the place as the guardian of both New France and the Grand Banks
fisheries, which latter were of great economic importance and a nursery of
seamen. Out of these considerations the French sacrificed Madras in far-off
India and the brilliant conquests of de Saxe in the Netherlands.
The British accordingly gave up Louisbourg. They partially
made up for the loss in 1749 when they built four forts and a barricade at
Halifax on the adjacent peninsula of Nova Scotia (Acadia). Within three years
Halifax had a population of four thousand, and the potential to become one of
the most important avenues of entry for British power to North America.
