Louisbourg’s builders had paid particular attention to guarding the harbor entrance with interlocking fields of fire from heavy artillery in the Island Battery at the mouth of the harbor; at the Royal Battery on its north shore; and, within the walls, at the Pièce de la Grave Battery at the east end of the town’s waterfront and the Circular Battery adjacent to the Dauphin Demi-bastion.

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In addition to being in a considerable state of disrepair, the fortifications possessed several weak points. Most bothersome was the noticeable drop in elevation from the King’s Bastion to the harbor that exposed that bastion’s right flank and the low-lying Dauphin Demi-bastion to artillery fire from nearby hills. Moreover, a large pond between the King’s and Dauphin bastions eliminated the protective slope of the glacis.

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.

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