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When the news came of Montcalm's great victory over Abercromby at Ticonderoga, he told Amherst he was ready to march inland at once with reinforcements. And after Louisbourg had surrendered and Boscawen had said it was too late to start for Quebec, he again volunteered to do any further service that Amherst required.
The report that it was the British commodore, and not their own general, to whom Louisbourg surrendered, made a prodigious stir among the inhabitants of New England, who had the touchiness common to small and ambitious peoples, and as they had begun the enterprise and borne most of its burdens and dangers, they thought themselves entitled to the chief credit of it.
As soon as the waters were sufficiently freed from ice to be navigable, Wolfe embarked eight thousand men with a formidable train of artillery, at Louisbourg, under convoy of admirals Saunders and Holmes. Late in June, he anchored about half way up the island of Orleans, on which he landed, without opposition.
The troops embarked on board the transport ships "Isabella," "Wade," "Alexander the Second," "Viscount Falmouth," "Lord Bleakeney," the sloops "York" and "Ulysses" and other vessels, under convoy of the "Squirrel" man-of-war. Vessels and troops had lately returned from the siege of Louisbourg. The Royal American Regiment, or 60th Regiment of Foot, was raised in America about 1756 or 1757.
At last, on the 8th, the whole army put off in three brigades of boats, supported by the frigates, which fired at the French defences. All three landing-places were threatened simultaneously, White Point, Flat Point, and Kennington Cove. These landing-places were, respectively, one, two, and four miles west of Louisbourg.
This hope seemed flattering enough in time of peace; but it vanished at each recurrent shock of war, because the Atlantic then became a hostile desert for the French, while it still remained a friendly highway for the British. The first French settlers in Louisbourg came over from Newfoundland, which had been given up to the British by the treaty.
She narrated the shipwreck, and the rescue by Zac and the young Count de Montresor, the encounter with the Aigle, and the subsequent arrest of Claude. She mentioned the death of Laborde, and the journey to Louisbourg by land, with the escape and pursuit of Claude, the fight with Cazeneau, and his subsequent arrival.
But it was not nearly strong enough to attempt a sea-fight off Louisbourg, and three smaller fleets that were meant to join it were all smashed up off the coast of France by the British, who thus knew, before beginning the siege, that Louisbourg could hardly expect any help from outside. Hawke was one of the British smashers this year.
The governor of Canada, the Marquis de la Jonquiere, however, viewed the matter from a different standpoint and demanded of Cornwallis an explanation in regard to the vessel captured. He again asserted the right of the French king to the lands occupied by his troops, and by his orders four Boston schooners were seized at Louisbourg as a reprisal for the brigantine taken by the "Albany."
Meanwhile the bulk of the New Englanders were establishing their camp along the brook which fell into Gabarus Bay beside Flat Point and within two miles of Louisbourg. Equipment of all kinds was very scarce. Tents were so few and bad that old sails stretched over ridge-poles had to be used instead.