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On the twenty-first day of July the three great ships, the Entreprenant, Capricieux, and Célèbre, were set on fire by a bomb-shell, and burned to ashes, so that none remained but the Prudent and Bienfaisant, which the admiral undertook to destroy.
"Señor, écoutez," said he, "can that religion be good which springs from a bad principle? Les Anglois étaient une fois des bons Catholiques; le Divorce d'un Roi capricieux fut la cause de leur changement. Ah, cela n'était pas bon." ...
The few men on board could not save her, and she drifted from her moorings. The wind blew the flames into the rigging of the "Entreprenant," and then into that of the "Capricieux." At night all three were in full blaze; for when the fire broke out the English batteries turned on them a tempest of shot and shell to prevent it from being extinguished.
NOTE. Four long and minute French diaries of the siege of Louisbourg are before me. The first, that of Drucour, covers a hundred and six folio pages, and contains his correspondence with Amherst, Boscawen, and Desgouttes. The second is that of the naval captain Tourville, commander of the ship "Capricieux," and covers fifty pages. The third is by an officer of the garrison whose name does not appear. The fourth, of about a hundred pages, is by another officer of the garrison, and is also anonymous. It is an excellent record of what passed each day, and of the changing conditions, moral and physical, of the besieged. These four Journals, though clearly independent of each other, agree in nearly all essential particulars. I have also numerous letters from the principal officers, military, naval, and civil, engaged in the defence, Drucour, Desgouttes, Houllière, Beaussier, Marolles, Tourville, Courserac, Franquet, Villejouin, Prévost, and Querdisien. These, with various other documents relating to the siege, were copied from the originals in the Archives de la Marine. Among printed authorities on the French side may be mentioned Pichon, Lettres et Mémoires pour servir
* The Prudent, of seventy-four guns; the Entreprenant, of seventy-four guns; the Capricieux, Célèbre, and Bienfaisant, of sixty-four guns each; the Apollo, of fifty guns; the Cheyre, Riche, Fidelle, Diana, and Echo, frigates.
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