MEMOIRE DU MINISTRE SUR LES DEPENSES
Comme les Iroquois ont promis nakis du parti des anglois, il faut le
Versailles, le 12 mars, 1750,
de tout faire pour détacher les Abé-
S envoyer quelques médailles d'or pour sui- les chefs et d'argent pour les guerriers. inée )uze 1Seidoit tant us A SHORT ACCOUNT OF WHAT PASSED AT CAPE BRETON FROM THE BEGINNING et OF THE LAST WAR UNTILL THE TAKING OF LOUISBOUR( BY THE ENGLISH IN 1748.
des Fa A COTE EN NTI NES ALT NP ET TT ENERR Nr Having served at l'Isle Royale or Cape Breton, from the year 1750 leur until] the surrender of Louisbourg the capital of that Island in 1758, pre-
lude to the success afterwards of the British arms in America, I shall
briefly describe the most memorable events which happened there during +: the war, with the same truth and impartiality that I have observed with
regard to my other Campaigns.
Accadie, or Nova Scotia, w:
sities, contentions and ruptur between France and England.
That country, attached particularly Was at the same time in the de whose authority extended to tance of twelve hundred leagues.
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The French had two forts there : La Baye Verte and Beauséjour, which where garrisoned by two companies of the collony troops, one from Canada and the other from Louisbourg, relieved every year.
The English soon after the peace in 1749, came there and built a Fort about a cannon shot from the French fort at Beauséjour where the French and English garrison lived for some time with great concord and harmony, untill Abbé Loutre, missionery of the Indians in Accadia soon put all in fire and flame, and may be justly deemed the scourge and curse of this country.
This wicked monster this cruel and blood thirsty Priest, more inhumane and Savage than the natural Savages, with a murdering, and slaughtering mind, instead of an Evangelick spirit, excited continually his Indians against the English, and it came to that pitch that they where at last pent up in their Fort, not being able for any of them to go out of it without running the risk to be immediatly scalped by the Indians always lurking round it.
The English begun the Hostility in 1750 À small man of war stationed at Iallifax, or Chibouctou, commanded [by Vergor] by Captain Rous, attached a French merchant ships commanded by Vergor capitaine of the colony Troops, took it after a Combate of several hours, and sent
Vergor to Louisbourg where TL saw him a short time after my arrival there.
I never could find out plausible reason for this infraction of the Peace after being solately concluded. The success of the English last war may be their justification ; but if they had been unfortunate, Rous’s action would have been loudly blamed and condemned even by the English nation.
It was very wrongly and with greatest injustice that the English accused the French of having a hand in the horreurs committed daily by
Loutre and his Indians. That is not a wicked priest capable of doing ?
Ie cloathed in an officers Regimentals an Indian named Cope, whom I saw some years after at Miramichy in Accadia, His hair curle®, poudered, and in a bag ; and laying an ambuscade of Indians near the Fort, he sent
Cope to it waring a white hankerchef in his hands, which was the usual
serving their now vastly extensive and unlimited possession in America.
sign for the admittance of the French into English forts having affairs with the commander of the Fort.
The Major of the fort, a worthy man, and greatly beloved by all the French officers, taking Cope for a french officer came out of the fort with his usual politeness to receive him ; But he no sooner appeared than the Indians in ambuch fired at him and killed him.
All the french had the greatest horreur and indignation at Loutre's barbarous actions ; and I dare say if the Court of France had known them they would have been very far from approving them.
But he had so ingratiated himself with the Marquis de la Gallisonière that it became a crime to write against him. It is needless to explain further Abbé Loutre execrable conduct. Cruelty and inhumanity has ever been sacerdotal from all ages.
The English garrison at lenght exasperated, and losing patience after a long series of such Pristly scenes, they besieged Beauséjour ; which being very weakly deffended, they took it in the spring of the year 1755: It would have been nevertheless more conformable to equity and justice if the English had endeavored to catch abbé Loutre and hang him, as the sole author and actor of these abominations.
It is now very useless to make a dissertion upon the limits of Accadie. Several very aged men of that country regulated them to me in a most plain, true and simple manner. ‘“ The extent of the orders of the ancient Governors of Acadie ” which they well remembered ; But it then appeared to me, by the vastly swelled pretentions of the English, infinitely beyond the reality, that they had no intention to settle them in a friendly manner.
If they had interrogated the old men of that country, with regard to the extent of the authority of their governors, they would have evited the querelles #1 chicanes of the commissarys, whose personel interest was to prolong the dispute, and that affair would have soon been determined.
The English took the shortest and surest method of deciding the quarrel, by taking the whole, providing that there is a possibility of pre-
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There cannot be, for a fortified town, a worse situation than the local of Louisbourg, it is commanded all roud by Heights. About two hundred paces from the curtain between the West Gate and the King's Bastion, a Height (hauteur de la Potence) overlooks a great part ofthe town, the Parade, the wharfs ; enfilades the Battery of the Grave, which deffends the Harbour, where the cannoners of this Battery, whose platform and cannons are entirely discovered from that eminence, may be marked out and killed from it with muskets.
Opposite to the South Gate, Porte de lu Reine, there is an other eminence, Cap Noir, which is still much higher than the hauleur de la potence ; discovers all across the town down to the warfs, and is only betwixt two and three huudreds paces distant from the curtain.
La batterie Royale, a fort which faces and deffends the éntry of the Harbour, is also domineered by a very high eminence, about three hundred fathoms from it where there it a Sentry Box for a Veddette.
Such was the natural and insurmontable defects of the position chosen : for a town of such importence; but it is still more astonishing, the stupid negligence of the French is not repairing the fortifications of Louisbourg that it might be at least in some state of deffence
At the time they built the fortifications probably they had not the experience that seasand is not fit for morter as it does not dry, bind and harden as with river sand, which may be o“casioned from the particles of salt it contains.
Al the walls of Masonry, the embrasures, the counter scarp and the parapets where tumbled down into the Fosses which where filled up with Rubbish. The pallisades where all of them rotten, in many parts of the covert Way they where crumbled away in a level with the ground, and there was scarce any vestiges of Glacis which had been distroyed by the cows grazing there. All the planks of the platforms were entirely rotten, as also all the carriages of the cannons.
In short the town had [been] more the look of Ancient Ruins than of a modern fortification since the {reaty of Utrecht,
The climate as the soil is abominable at Louisbourg the worst of all the Islands. Clouds of tick fog which come from the South west covers it generally, from the month of Avril until the end of July to such a degree that some times for a month together they never see the sun, at the same time that there is bright clear weather at the distance of two or three leagues from it : and the country to the distance of five or six leagues is a poor miserable soil, Hills, Rocks, Swamps, Lakes and Mosses, uncapable of any productions.
Altho' the ground in general of Cape Breton is lean and gravely, in the tour 1 made all over the island with the Count de Raimond then Governer of it, I saw in many places spots capables of vielding rich harvests of ali kind of grain if cultivated. We saw the tryals that the inhabitans had made, «ven of wheat, which promised a plentiful crop.
There is a vast number of beautiful natural meadows with hay above two feet high which rots every year without being eut ; and although we scarce found sixty head of black cattle in all the island, I am fully persuaded that the product of these meadows in hay is suflicient to nourish thirty thousand of them.
But it would not have been for the interest of the Intendant that the Island should produce the necessary subsistance of its inhabitans as the means of their heaping up Riches proceeds from the immense number of ships sent vearly from France loaded with flower and salt provisions, whi-h they embezzle (from France) for their profit, and often pass them twice in consumation,
This employment, happily unknown in the British constitution. is the utter ruin of the French collonies and the Iinderance of their flourishine by population, as in the British establishments, by their Tyranny and Robberies. Note A.
The easy access of the Harbour of Louisbourg for the fishing vessels engaged the French to fix there their principal establishment, prefarably to the Bay Espagnol and Port Dauphin two of the finest harbours anywhere to be found and capable to contain a thousand ships secure from all the winds of the compass.
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