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Updated: June 21, 2025
It would have been a terrible sight for the Frenchmen, could they but have witnessed it! At length, on the 24th of March, 1745, the army gave a parting shout, and set sail from Boston in ten or twelve vessels which had been hired by the governor. A few days afterwards an English fleet, commanded by Commodore Peter Warren, sailed also for Louisburg to assist the provincial army.
Save in the case of Minorca, she carefully held her own sea-bases and eagerly seized those of the enemy. What a lion in the path was Gibraltar to the French squadrons of Toulon and Brest! What hope for French succor to Canada, when the English fleet had Louisburg under its lee?
The British Government had decided on making a determined effort to wrest the Colony of New France from the hands of the French, and one of the few steps was to attempt the capture of the port of Louisburg, at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence; a place which the enemy were said to have rendered almost impregnable at an expenditure of some million and a quarter pounds.
The cruel Micmacs needed little instigation. They swooped down on the little town of Dartmouth, opposite Halifax, and within gunshot of its forts, and reaped a rich harvest of scalps and booty. The English prisoners they sometimes sold at Louisburg for arms and ammunition. The Governor asserted that pure compassion was the motive of this traffic, in order to rescue the captives from massacre.
When the news that Louisburg was taken reached New England the people rejoiced. Bells were rung, cannons were fired and bonfires blazed in all the chief towns. In England itself the news was received with surprise and delight, and Pepperell, the merchant-soldier, was made a baronet and could henceforth call himself Sir William Pepperell.
He sailed into the harbour without warning and without fear, in the very eye of the French artillery, landed his men, and began a siege which resulted, after six weeks, in the reduction of Louisburg. It was a gallant feat of arms, marred only by the fact that a foolish Government declined to take advantage of a colonial victory.
And with that determination and persistence which always brings success he labored hard to persuade New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to join with Massachusetts in an effort to capture Louisburg.
One of the conditions of the peace was that Madras should be restored to the English in exchange for Louisburg, the prize won by the North American colonists and released by them as reluctantly as Madras was by Dupleix.
About seven thousand still remained in the peninsula of Nova Scotia, but they claimed a political neutrality, resolutely refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the alien conquerors. They were accused of intriguing with their countrymen at Louisburg, with resisting the English authority, and with inciting, and even leading, the Indians to ravage the English settlements.
He landed a part of the forces on the coast of Nova Scotia, and returned with the rest to New York. A fleet specially sent out from Great Britain, under the command of Admiral Holborne, sailed for Cape Breton about the same time; but the sight of the French ships in Louisburg harbour proved too much for the Admiral's nerves, and he steered for Halifax.
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