The day after the landing was a busy one for both sides. The New Englanders established camps and landed supplies. During these first days of the siege, a lack of discipline among his troops plagued Pepperrell. A large party of New Englanders looted and burned storehouses at the northeast end of the harbor, much to everyone's annoyance when the extent of the waste was realized.

In order to gain a clear view of enemy troops who might attempt to approach the fortress's Dauphin Gate, the main landward entrance to the town, the French indulged in some destruction of their own, burning a number of the houses that lay only a short distance from the walls on the road that led to the Royal Battery.

Fearing that the isolated Royal Battery itself would easily fall to the enemy, thus costing them one quarter of the total Louisbourg garrison, the French withdrew, taking with them food supplies and military stores but leaving behind a quantity of mortar shells and cannonballs. Mindful of how much this battery had cost to build and of the key role it played in defending the harbor, the French chose not to destroy it but only to spike its cannon so that they could not readily be turned on the town.

Two days after the landing, William Vaughan and about a dozen men, roving near the Royal Battery, noticed the absence of chimney smoke. Vaughan and his party entered the abandoned defenses; shortly afterward they repulsed several boatloads of French evidently intent on removing the remaining military stores. This easy capture of an important outlying battery boosted New England morale and provided an unexpected vantage point for the New Englanders' cannoneers and their siege lines, which soon stretched in an irregular series of batteries, trenches, and camps to the besiegers' main camp near the mouth of a stream known as Freshwater Brook.

Major Seth Pomeroy and twenty smiths soon drilled out the touchholes of the Royal Battery's spiked cannon, making it possible for the New Englanders to begin firing at the French with their own guns just one day after the battery's capture. The French responded with an ineffectual bombardment from the town and the Island Battery.

Meanwhile, the New Englanders were landing additional artillery at Freshwater Cove and moving them across the rough and swampy ground to a rocky hill opposite the King's Bastion. Moving large cannon through the bog–something the French believed no sane attacker would ever attempt–was 'attended with incredible Difficulty there being no possibility of drawing them with Horses or oxen.' Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Meserve, a New Hampshire shipwright, constructed large sledges upon which the heavy cannon could be dragged more easily across the rough terrain.

Green Hill was the most prominent eminence outside the walls, though at 1,760 yards distance, it was at extreme range. By May 15, the third day after the landing, the New Englanders opened fire from the hill with mortars and some of their lighter guns, but they were simply too far away to have much effect. Two days later, however, they began building a Coehorn battery at almost half the distance between Green Hill and the town, and within a week, they began yet another battery near the harbor and still closer to the town. By month's end they had placed an advanced battery only 250 yards from the low-lying Dauphin Demi-bastion. The rival forces were now close enough to exchange musket fire as well as taunts and insults.

Bombardment became the order of the day with 'Cannons B[ombs] Cohorns &c Continually roaring on Boath Sides[.] Women and Children heard to Screach and Cry out . . . when our B[ombs] Came amongst them.' Shortages of powder provided frequent interruptions in the New England barrage, and inexperienced gunners blew up no fewer than nine cannon and a large mortar.

On May 31, the New Englanders opened a fifth battery against the west end of the town where they mounted 42-pounders moved from the Royal Battery. Its fire across the southwest corner of the harbor proved particularly effective against the Dauphin Demi-bastion and adjoining Circular Battery.

Few New Englanders were casualties of the French return fire, but within two weeks of landing many had taken ill. Seth Pomeroy thought the reasons were plain: 'ye ground here is Cold and weet[.] ye water . . . a Redish Coaller and stagnated[.] . . . no beds To Ly on nor Tents To Keep off ye Fogs & Dews[.] our Provision is Chiefly Poark and Breaad withou[t] Sauce.' Many came down with dysentery–known as the 'bloody fluxes'–although few died from its effects.

As the siege dragged on and the New England bombardment continued, Louisbourg looked desperately to the sea for relief. Like all European-style fortresses of the period, Louisbourg was not intended to hold out indefinitely against a besieging force. But distance and supply lines were crucial factors for survival, and in 1745 both worked against Louisbourg. The French in Quebec did not learn of the New England assault until mid-June, and France learned even later of the town's dire straits.

The first French warship to depart for Louisbourg in 1745 was the thirty-two-gun frigate Renommée. The vessel sailed from France in February, but was unable to enter Louisbourg harbor and eventually returned to France, arriving back there in late June.

The French man-of-war Vigilante, which left France in April, posed a much greater threat to the New England siege because she carried a five-hundred-man crew and badly needed supplies. Arriving off Louisbourg on May 31, the Vigilante fought a desperate battle that ended with her capture–a major loss to the French effort.

As the New England cannon slowly opened a breach in Louisbourg's fortifications, the besiegers considered how to eliminate the batteries protecting the harbor so that the British fleet might join in a combined land and sea assault on the town. An attempt on the night of June 6 to take the Island Battery, whose guns kept the fleet at bay, seemed likely to succeed. After a fierce fight, however, the New England troops were compelled to withdraw with casualties numbering almost half their force. The next day the disheartened siege batteries fell silent.

Checked by this disastrous amphibious assault, the New Englanders turned to Lighthouse Point. There they constructed a battery whose fire swept the Island Battery, but was so placed that return fire had little effect. On June 24, the New Englanders moved a large mortar to the Lighthouse Point battery, and the next day saw seventeen of nineteen shells hit inside the Island Battery. 'When the French saw a bomb coming,' said one witness, 'they would jump out of the ambuseers [embrasures] into the sea.'

With the British fleet now massing at the harbor entrance, the French assessed their situation. What they found was not good. The Royal Battery had been captured, and the Island Battery was largely silenced. Only three guns were still mounted at the Circular Battery, and the Dauphin Gate and the adjoining wall had been breached. Little gunpowder remained. The soldiers, continually laboring to repair the fortifications, were exhausted. The townspeople, huddled during the bombardment in bomb-proof casemates beneath the barracks, petitioned for surrender negotiations to commence.

One June 26, as Pepperrell and Warren–who was now able to sail his ships into the harbor–prepared for a last, massive land and naval assault, Duchambon initiated a capitulation.* Under the surrender terms, the military garrison would be able to march out with the honors of war, and the inhabitants were to be repatriated to France with their movable property. This provision angered the New Englanders who, in return for their service, had been promised plunder and booty.

There was some minor jostling between Warren and Pepperrell over preeminence at the surrender. But in the end 'our Army Marcht To ye Citty the Colours were flying the Drums Beating Trumpets Sounding Flutes & Vials Playing . . . .' Thus the army celebrated 'the greatest Conquest, that Ever was Gain'd by New England' while 'ye French men and women & Children on ye Parade they Lookt verry sorrowful.'

Paris was stunned that its strongest North American post could be taken by an untrained army of provincials. Boston, however, received the news with joyous celebrations. And London, for its part, was overjoyed at word of Louisbourg's capture. Honors, tributes and testimonials were heaped upon the victors. Warren was promoted to the rank of rear admiral. Pepperrell became a baronet and, along with Governor Shirley, was given the right to raise regiments, an honor that provided remuneration as well as status.

With the fighting over, the troops wanted to go home. They had enlisted for an expedition, not for garrison duty. Nonetheless, more than two thousand were forced to remain in Louisbourg until relieved the next year by British regulars from Gibraltar.

In September Governor Shirley averted a threatened mutiny by promising an increase in pay. But the winter of 1745-46 was one of death for the New Englanders, whose main task was now to repair and rebuild the fortifications in the event of a French attack. Louisbourg's harsh climate, the ruinous condition of its buildings following the siege, and the filth in which the occupation force lived resulted in sickness running wild. After having lost only about one hundred men to enemy fire and another thirty to illness during the siege, the New Englanders buried 561 of their number between the end of November and the middle of February.** Many of these casualties, due to the frozen ground, were buried under floorboards until Spring.

The New Englanders' sacrifice, therefore, had been great. Thus it was understandable that the return of Louisbourg to France in 1748 through the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle engendered lingering New England resentment against Great Britain.

Louisbourg's return to French control ultimately sealed its fate. The British established Halifax in Nova Scotia in 1749 as a counterbalance to the French fortress. When hostilities between Britain and France erupted again in the 1750s, Louisbourg had to be taken once again before the British could advance on French Canada in Quebec.

Two years after its recapture in 1758–this time by the British Army–engineers planted explosive charges in Louisbourg's fortifications and blew the massive walls into piles of rubble. For the next two centuries these ruins would bear silent witness to the turbulent role the Fortress of Louisbourg had played in North American history.

*Pepperrell noted in June 1746 that about twelve hundred of his men had died.

**Ile Royale, which comprised present-day Cape Breton (also known as Ile Royale) and Prince Edward Island (Ile St. Jean), was a colony in itself, separate from the vast expanse along the St. Lawrence River and the eastern Great Lakes that was known as Canada or New France.

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This article was written by B.A. Balcom and originally published in the August 1995 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!

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