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The British muttered threats that subjects of their King who would not fight for him had no right to protection under British law. Even then feeling was so high that there was talk of driving the Acadians from their farms and setting them adrift; and these poor people trembled for their own fate when the British victors at Louisbourg in 1745 removed the French population to France.
Halifax was yet in its infancy and in a comparatively defenceless state; Louisbourg and Quebec were supporting the French on the St. John and he had neither the men nor the money to oppose their proceedings. It seems, too, that he had been called to account for the large expenditure he had made in Nova Scotia.
Even the elements, as the anonymous Habitant de Louisbourg complains in his wonderfully candid diary, seemed to have taken sides. There had never been so fine a spring for naval operations. But this was the one thing which was entirely independent of French fault or British merit. All the other strokes of luck owed something to human causes.
"It is your friend from Louisbourg, who was going to put you in irons, and send you to France for trial when the mutinous garrison threatened to surrender the place if we did not pay them." Varin was not so intoxicated but the name of Philibert roused his anger. He set his cup down with a bang upon the table.
Making a visit to the Grand Battery on the same day, he won high favor with the regiment stationed there by the gift of a hogshead of rum to drink his health. Whether Warren's "gallant ball" ever took place in Louisbourg does not clearly appear. Pepperrell, on his part, celebrated the victory by a dinner to the commodore and his officers.
Not one was left fit for immediate action; and had La Motte sailed out of Louisbourg, he would have had them all at his mercy. Delay, the source of most of the disasters that befell England and her colonies at this dismal epoch, was the ruin of the Louisbourg expedition. The greater part of La Motte's fleet reached its destination a full month before that of Holbourne.
Her position was a painful one, and the only hope remaining was that of returning to France. And to go to Louisbourg was the surest way of doing that. One thing, however, she could not help asking, for this she felt to be a matter of extreme importance. "Is Père Michel going?" "He is," said Cazeneau. "He has asked permission to go with our party, and I have granted it."
Louisbourg was correctly enough described as an indispensable link between France and the long chain of French posts in the valleys of the Mississippi and the St Lawrence. But less well explained in America and less well understood in Europe was the fact that the separate military chains in Old France and New could never hold an oversea dominion unless a naval chain united them.
His arrival was the cause of great joy among the colonists. After a short consultation with General Pepperell, the Commodore sailed to cruise before Louisbourg, and was soon followed by the colonial fleet and army, which, on the 30th April, arrived in Cap Rouge Bay. It was not until then that the French were aware that an attack upon them was meditated.
It is only fair to the Abbe Le Loutre to mention that the officer who criticizes him in this rude fashion was the Chevalier Johnston, an Englishman by birth and a puritan by religion and as such prejudiced against the French missionary. Johnston, however, served at Louisbourg on the side of France with great fidelity in the capacity of lieutenant, interpreter and engineer.
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