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This ignorant and self-satisfied recklessness might have cost the besiegers dear if the French, instead of being perplexed and startled at the novelty of their proceedings, had taken advantage of it; but Duchambon and some of his officers, remembering the mutiny of the past winter, feared to make sorties, lest the soldiers might desert or take part with the enemy.
Most of them proved sound; and being mounted at Lighthouse Point, they were turned against their late owners at the Island Battery. When Gorham's regiment first took post at Lighthouse Point, Duchambon thought the movement so threatening that he forgot his former doubts, and ordered a sortie against it, under the Sieur de Beaubassin.
M. Duchambon was at the time governor of Louisbourg, and maintained the defence for nearly forty days. The capitulation of the fortress was hastened by the fact that the English fleet captured the French frigate Vigilante, on whose arrival the garrison had been depending for weeks.
As this was the only French success during the siege, Duchambon makes the most of it. At daybreak Louisbourg rang with shouts of triumph. It was plain that a disorderly militia could not capture the Island Battery.
The affair was so serious that though order was restored, some of the officers lost all confidence in the soldiers; and this distrust proved most unfortunate during the siege. The Governor, Chevalier Duchambon, successor of Duquesnel, who had died in the autumn, was not a man to grapple with a crisis, being deficient in decision of character, if not in capacity. He expected an attack.
The Habitant de Louisbourg places the land-force alone at eight or nine thousand men, and Duchambon reports to the minister D'Argenson that he was attacked in all by thirteen thousand. His mortifying position was a sharp temptation to exaggerate; but his conduct can only be explained by a belief that the force of his enemy was far greater than it was in fact.
This event, with the erection of some works on the high cliff at the light house, by which the island battery was much annoyed, and the preparations evidently making for a general assault, determined Duchambon, the governor of Louisbourg, to surrender; and, in a few days, he capitulated.
Duchambon says that soon after the English landed, he got a letter from Thierry, the captain in command of the Royal Battery, advising that the cannon should be spiked and the works blown up. This is the Governor's official report. Thierry and his garrison came off in boats, after spiking the cannon in a hasty way, without stopping to knock off the trunnions or burn the carriages.
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.
Just after Christmas in 1744, there had been a mutiny over a petty question of butter and bacon. Here, as in all French colonies, there were cliques, with the suspicions and bitterness which they involve. The Governor Duchambon, though brave enough, was a man of poor judgment in a position that required both tact and talent. The English did not make the mistake of delaying their preparations.
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