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Updated: June 28, 2025
Never dreaming of so rude an interruption, the raiders were taken utterly by surprise and made no effective resistance. A number fell at the first volley, which the English poured in upon them in charging. Then followed a hand-to-hand fight, fierce but brief, which Le Loutre didn't see, as he had wisely retired on the instant of the Englishmen's arrival.
When Le Loutre heard this, he mounted the pulpit, broke into fierce invectives, threatened the terrified people with excommunication, and preached himself into a state of exhaustion.
Le Loutre, it is true, was to be seen in his shirt-sleeves, with a pipe in his mouth, directing the Acadians in their work of strengthening the fortifications. They, on their part, thought more of escape than of fighting. Some of them vainly begged to be allowed to go home; others went off without leave, which was not difficult, as only one side of the place was attacked.
"My masters, God and the King" was a phrase of the Sulpician father Piquet working at this time on the St. Lawrence. Le Loutre could have echoed the words. He was an ardent politician and France supplied him with both money and arms to induce the Indians to attack the English.
Le Loutre himself seems not to have been among them; but they kept up for a time a helter-skelter fight, encouraged by two other missionaries, Germain and Lalerne, who were near being caught by the English. Lawrence quickly routed them, took possession of the cemetery, and prepared to fortify himself.
In one of the two vaulted chambers of masonry which were dignified with the title of "bombproofs," a party of French officers, with a captive English lieutenant, were sitting at breakfast. A shell from the English mortars dropped through the ceiling, exploded, and killed seven of the company. Vergor, with other officers and Le Loutre, was in the second bombproof.
Lecorbeau, was no faint-heart, though his far-seeing sagacity often made him appear so in the eyes of those who did not know him well. As for Pierre, he was now in his element, sniffing the battle like a young warhorse, and forgetful of the odds against him. Le Loutre was everywhere at once, tireless, seeing everything, spurring the work, and worth a hundred Vergors in such a crisis as this.
The Indians, he said, were merely allies, not French subjects, and Le Loutre acted under the direction of the governor of Canada. He promised also that if any Frenchman molested the English, he should be punished, a promise which, as subsequent events showed, he had no intention of keeping.
Le Loutre was not to be found; he had escaped in disguise with his box of papers, and fled to Baye Verte to join his brother missionary, Manach. Thence he made his way to Quebec, where the Bishop received him with reproaches. He soon embarked for France; but the English captured him on the way, and kept him eight years in Elizabeth Castle, on the Island of Jersey.
To such a proceeding Cornwallis objected and Le Loutre then wrote to the French authorities an earnest letter in behalf of the Acadians, in which he says, "Justice pleads for them and as France is the resource of the unfortunate, I hope, Monseigneur, that you will try to take under your protection this forsaken people and obtain for them through his majesty liberty to depart from Acadia and the means to settle upon French soil and to transport their effects to the River St.
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