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LOUISBOURG

BEN FRANKLIN WARNED THAT IT WOULD BE A
“HARD NUT TO CRACK”–BUT IN 1745 A RAGTAG
ARMY OF NEW ENGLANDERS CAPTURED FRANCE’S
MOST IMPOSING NORTH AMERICAN STRONGHOLD.

BY B.A. BALCOM

The early spring of 1745 saw New England preparing for war. Seaports bustled as a makeshift armada prepared to carry a newly raised, inexperienced colonial army of farmers, fishermen, merchants, and frontiersmen into battle. The unlikely objective was Louisbourg, a heavily fortified seaport and capital of the French colony of Ile Royale some six hundred miles northeast of Boston.*

Longstanding colonial rivalries between Great Britain and France fueled the expedition. By the mid-eighteenth century, Britain had driven Portuguese and Spanish fishermen from the rich Newfoundland banks; New Holland and New Sweden had become the British colonies of New York and Delaware; and many Native North Americans had been decimated and displaced. Among European powers, only the French to the north and the Spanish to the south contested the British dominance.

In the northeast, natural barriers separated the heartlands of New England and New France. Lake Champlain and the Hudson River offered a corridor between New York and Montreal, but the distance separating the rival settlements offered each a measure of security. Maine was disputed territory, claimed both by the New England colonies and by Acadian settlements on the Bay of Fundy.

An uneasy peace had existed between England and France since 1713, when the Treaty of Utrecht brought the War of Spanish Succession–called Queen Anne’s War by the British colonists–to a close. That peace ended in March 1744, when France declared war on Great Britain. The War of Austrian Succession, or King George’s War, soon engulfed the belligerents’ North American colonies, the French at Louisbourg gaining an initial advantage when they received news of the state of war in early May, three weeks in advance of their English counterparts in Boston.

France saw the new conflict as a golden opportunity to recover Nova Scotia, ceded by treaty to Britain thirty-one years earlier. Attacks by Nova Scotia’s aboriginal native occupants, the Mi`kmaq, had restricted British settlement there to fortified outposts at Annapolis Royal and Canso.

The French struck first at Canso, an important seasonal New England fishery at the easternmost tip of Nova Scotia that had employed up to 250 schooners and 3,000 fishermen during the 1720s and 1730s. Situated only sixty miles by sea from Louisbourg, the British port threatened a vital supply route from the Acadian farmlands. Since Louisbourg was short of food that spring, hunger proved an effective spur to action. Using fishing vessels as transports and two privateers as escorts, 350 soldiers and sailors under Captain François Du Pont Duvivier moved on the attack.

With only eighty-seven soldiers defending rudimentary fortifications, the British surrendered after a short bombardment and minimal resistance. The French destroyed both the fortifications and the settlement and took the garrison, their families, and a few fishermen back to Louisbourg as prisoners.

French privateers followed this success by attacking New England’s fisheries and commerce. The raiders began by striking at rival vessels encountered off the Nova Scotia coast and eventually extended their reach down to New England itself. French warships on their way to and from Louisbourg also attacked New England shipping. But the British colonies soon replied with privateers of their own and, by August, had largely bottled up French shipping in Louisbourg.

With Canso’s destruction, Annapolis Royal became the sole remaining British stronghold in Nova Scotia. Its garrison too was under-strength and poorly equipped, but its earthen fortifications recently had been repaired, and its defenders expected an attack. Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts, fearing a domino-like string of French successes that would bring the enemy to his colony’s shores, rallied support for Annapolis Royal’s defense. Massachusetts raised almost two hundred men (many of whom would not receive their weapons until arriving at Annapolis Royal).

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