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At two o'clock on the next morning a party of Acadians from Chipody roused Vergor with the news. In great alarm, he sent a messenger to Louisbourg to beg for help, and ordered all the fighting men of the neighborhood to repair to the fort. They counted in all between twelve and fifteen hundred; but they had no appetite for war.
Julian, too, was very desirous to meet Madame Drucour once more, and renew with her those pleasant relations which had commenced within the fortress of Louisbourg. Townshend, the Brigadier now in command, had granted easy terms to the place. He knew too well the peril of his position not to be thankful for having Quebec almost at any price.
The attack on Crown-Point, which had been so long meditated, was laid aside as of less importance than the intended expedition to Louisbourg, now substituted in its place, and undoubtedly a more considerable object in itself.
She informed him that Laborde was dead; that Mimi was in terrible distress, and in mortal terror of Cazeneau; and finally, that she was to be taken to Louisbourg. All this filled Zac with concern and apprehension.
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.
There is a touch of doom for France in the fact that its own lost fortress of Louisbourg was to be the rendezvous of the fleet. Saunders, however, arrived so early that the entrance to Louisbourg was still blocked with ice, and he went on to Halifax. In time he returned to Louisbourg, and from there the great fleet sailed for Quebec. The voyage was uneventful.
Provincial insolvency and the absence of either a fleet or an army were urged by the Opposition. But the fighting party put forth all their strength and pleaded that delay meant reinforcements for Louisbourg and a good chance lost for ever. The vote would have been a tie if a member of the Opposition had not slipped and broken his leg as he was hurrying down to the House.
The truth was that the reinforcements never arrived, that Marin had failed to take Annapolis, and that there was no real danger from his own dwindling force, even if it had tried to relieve Louisbourg in June. But the rumour ran quickly through the whole camp, probably not without Pepperrell's own encouragement, and at once produced, not a panic, but the most excellent effect.
Success was now impossible, and the enterprise was abandoned. Loudon, with his troops, sailed back to New York; and Admiral Holbourne, who had been joined by four additional ships, sailed for Louisbourg, in hopes that the French fleet would come out and fight him. He cruised for some time off the port, but Lamotte, the French admiral, would not come out.
Then, having cut off Canada from France and taken her outpost at Louisbourg, he aimed a death-blow at her very heart by sending Saunders, with a quarter of the whole British Navy, against Quebec, the stronghold of New France, where the land attack was to be made by a little army of 9,000 men under Wolfe. Even this was not the whole of Pitt's plan for the conquest of Canada.
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