[144] Nicholson and Vetch to the Secretary of State, 16 September, 1710; Hutchinson, ii. 164; Penhallow. Massachusetts sent two battalions of four hundred and fifty men each, and Connecticut one battalion of three hundred men, while New Hampshire and Rhode Island united their contingents to form a fourth battalion.
[145] The contemporary English translation of this letter is printed among the papers appended to Nicholson's Journal in Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, i.
[146] In a letter to Ponchartrain, 1 October, 1710 (new style), Subercase declares that he has not a sou left, nor any credit. "I have managed to borrow enough to maintain the garrison for the last two years, and have paid what I could by selling all my furniture." Charlevoix's account of the siege has been followed by most writers, both French and English; but it is extremely incorrect. It was answered by one De Gannes, apparently an officer under Subercase, in a paper called Observations sur les Erreurs de la Relation du Siège du Port Royal ... faittes sur de faux mémoires par le révérend Père Charlevoix, whom De Gannes often contradicts flatly. Thus Charlevoix puts the besieging force at thirty-four hundred men, besides officers and sailors, while De Gannes puts it at fourteen hundred; and while Charlevoix says that the garrison were famishing, his critic says that they were provisioned for three months. See the valuable notes to Shea's Charlevoix, v. 227-232.
The journal of Nicholson was published "by authority" in the Boston News Letter, November, 1710, and has been reprinted, with numerous accompanying documents, including the French and English correspondence during the siege, in the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, i.
Vaudreuil, before the siege, sent a reinforcement to Subercase, who, by a strange infatuation, refused it. N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 853.
CHAPTER VIII.
1710, 1711.
WALKER'S EXPEDITION.
Scheme of La Ronde Denys.—Boston warned against British Designs.—Boston to be ruined.—Plans of the Ministry.—Canada doomed.—British Troops at Boston.—The Colonists denounced.—The Fleet sails for Quebec.—Forebodings of the Admiral.—Storm and Wreck.—Timid Commanders.—Retreat.—Joyful News for Canada.—Pious Exultation.—Fanciful Stories.—Walker Disgraced.
Military aid from Old England to New, promised in one year and actually given in the next, was a fact too novel and surprising to escape the notice either of friends or of foes.