United States or Oman ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The excellent harbor was a haven for the fishermen of adjacent waters and a base for French privateers, who were a terror to all the near trade routes of the Atlantic. On the military side Louisbourg seemed a success. But the French failed in their effort to colonize the island of Cape Breton on which the fortress stood. Today this island has great iron and other industries.
On these subjects, he was instructed to consult with Shirley, to whom orders of the same date were written, directing him to assist the King's ships with transports, men, and provisions. Such deep impression had the design of taking Louisbourg made on the mind of Shirley, that he did not wait for intelligence of the reception given to his application for naval assistance.
Both fleet and army made their rendezvous at Louisbourg; a larger fleet and a smaller army than those of the year before. Two new toasts were going the rounds of the Service: 'Here's to the eye of a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe! and 'Here's to British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America! Of course they were standing toasts.
John river region in the document from which this extract is taken, concludes by strongly recommending that the supply of flour and bacon should be sent, not to the store houses at Quebec and Louisbourg, but directly to St. John, where it would arrive as safely as at any other port and with less expense to the king and much more expedition to the inhabitants.
After Louisbourg he became an Imperial hero. The only other the Army had yet produced in this war was Lord Howe, who had been killed in a skirmish just before Ticonderoga. Wolfe knew Howe well, admired him exceedingly, and called him 'the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time, and the best soldier in the army. He would have served under him gladly.
The articles stipulated that the garrison should be sent to England, prisoners of war, in British ships; that all artillery, arms, munitions, and stores, both in Louisbourg and elsewhere on the Island of Cape Breton, as well as on Isle St.-Jean, now Prince Edward's Island, should be given up intact; that the gate of the Dauphin's Bastion should be delivered to the British troops at eight o'clock in the morning; and that the garrison should lay down their arms at noon.
The five soldiers of whom Nairne speaks were no doubt men of the 78th Highlanders and ancestors of a goodly portion of the population of Malbaie at the present time. Perhaps some of them had fought at Culloden; certainly all fought at Louisbourg and Quebec. In the first days at Murray Bay Nairne was in debt.
While they were in camp the weather had been favorable; but they were scarcely housed when a cold, persistent rain poured down in floods that would have drenched their flimsy tents and turned their huts of turf into mud-heaps, robbing the sick of every hope of recovery. Even now they got little comfort from the shattered tenements of Louisbourg.
Shortly after his refusal to join, instructions which had been sent off from the British Government, approving of the attack upon Louisbourg, as proposed by Governor Shirley, and which Pepperell had gone to attack, without waiting for Imperial approval, had reached Commodore Warren, and without loss of time he proceeded direct to Canso, whither it was reported the Colonial fleet had gone.
Of these the ten battalions, commonly mentioned as regiments, supplied six thousand four hundred; detached grenadiers from Louisbourg, three hundred; artillery, three hundred; rangers, four hundred; light infantry, two hundred; marines, one thousand. Fraser, in his Journal of the Siege, gives a tabular view of the whole.
Word Of The Day