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Presently he almost ran into the sleepy French-Canadian sentry, who heard only a voice speaking perfect French and telling him it was all right nothing but the reinforcements from the Beauport camp; for Wolfe knew that Montcalm had been trying to get a French regular officer to replace Vergor, who was as good a thief as Bigot and as bad a soldier as Vaudreuil.
His hope would have been stronger if he had known that Vergor had once been tried for misconduct and cowardice in the surrender of Beauséjour, and saved from merited disgrace by the friendship of Bigot and the protection of Vaudreuil. The morning of the seventh was fair and warm, and the vessels of Holmes, their crowded decks gay with scarlet uniforms, sailed up the river to Cap-Rouge.
It would belittle him to let Montcalm take his place! And, anyhow, it was all nonsense! Raising his voice so that the staff could hear him, he then said: 'The English haven't wings! Let La Guienne stay where it is! I'll see about that Foulon myself to-morrow morning! 'To-morrow morning' began early, long before Vergor and Vaudreuil were out of bed.
They sent an army to Fort Lawrence, attacked Fort Beausejour, forced its timid commander Vergor to surrender, mastered the whole surrounding country, and obliged Le Loutre himself to fly to Quebec. There he embarked for France. The English captured him on the sea, however, and the relentless and cruel priest spent many years in an English prison.
The details of the seige of Fort Beausejour need not here be given, suffice it to say that after four days' bombardment the Sieur de Vergor was obliged, on the 16th June, to surrender to Colonel Monckton. Capt. John Rous in his early career commanded a Boston privateer.
The court-martial was packed; adverse evidence was shuffled out of sight; and Vergor, acquitted and restored to his rank, lived to inflict on New France another and a greater injury. Now began the first act of a deplorable drama. Monckton, with his small body of regulars, had pitched their tents under the walls of Beauséjour. Winslow and Scott, with the New England troops, lay not far off.
But, in the meantime, news reached the French that no reinforcements could be expected from Louisbourg; and such disaffection arose among the Acadians that they were forbidden by a council of war to deliberate together or to desert the fort under pain of being shot. When the British renewed the attack, however, the Acadians requested Vergor to capitulate; and he feebly acquiesced.
He knew that the little French post above the Anse au Foulon was commanded by one of Bigot's blackguards; Vergor, whose Canadian militiamen were as slack as their commander.
Vergor drew his lips together for a soft whistle, as he rose to direct the storing of his goods. "It is a young general with whom I am to have the honor of messing. I thought he had the air of camps and courts the moment I saw his head over the side of the cart." Many a boy secretly despises the man to whose merry insolence he submits.
A demand was also made that the English should in no way hinder the migration of the Acadians from the peninsula of Nova Scotia to the mainland or elsewhere. It is needless to say that the British government did not comply with these demands and here was one of the many grievances that led to a renewal of the war a little later. The Sieur de Vergor and the crew of the St.
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