La Perelle, the French officer, delivered a note from Duchambon, directed to both Pepperrell and Warren, and asking for a suspension of arms to enable him to draw up proposals for capitulation.[145] Warren chanced to be on shore when the note came; and the two commanders answered jointly that it had come in good time, as they had just resolved on a general attack, and that they would give the governor till eight o’clock of the next morning to make his proposals.[146]
They came in due time, but were of such a nature that Pepperrell refused to listen to them, and sent back Bonaventure, the officer who brought them, with counter-proposals. These were the terms which Duchambon had rejected on the seventh of May, with added conditions; as, among others, that no officer, soldier, or inhabitant of Louisbourg should bear arms against the King of England or any of his allies for the space of a year. Duchambon stipulated,
as the condition of his acceptance, that his troops should march out of the fortress with their arms and colors.[147] To this both the English commanders consented, Warren observing to Pepperrell “the uncertainty of our affairs, that depend so much on wind and weather, makes it necessary not to stickle at trifles.”[148] The articles were signed on both sides, and on the seventeenth the ships sailed peacefully into the harbor, while Pepperrell with a part of his ragged army entered the south gate of the town. “Never was a place more mal’d [mauled] with cannon and shells,” he writes to Shirley; “neither have I red in History of any troops behaving with greater courage. We gave them about nine thousand cannon-balls and six hundred bombs.”[149] Thus this unique military performance ended in complete and astonishing success.
According to English accounts, the French had lost about three hundred men during the siege; but their real loss seems to have been not much above a third of that number. On the side of the besiegers, the deaths from all causes were only a hundred and thirty, about thirty of which were from disease. The French used their muskets to good purpose; but their mortar practice was bad, and close as was the advanced battery to their walls, they often failed to hit it, while the ground on both sides of it looked
like a ploughed field, from the bursting of their shells. Their surrender was largely determined by want of ammunition, as, according to one account, the French had but thirty-seven barrels of gunpowder left,[150] —in which particular the besiegers fared little better.[151]
The New England men had been full of confidence in the result of the proposed assault, and a French writer says that the timely capitulation saved Louisbourg from a terrible catastrophe;[152] yet, ill-armed and disorderly as the besiegers were, it may be doubted whether the quiet ending of the siege was not as fortunate for them as for their foes. The discouragement of the French was increased by greatly exaggerated ideas of the force of the “Bastonnais.” The Habitant de Louisbourg places the land-force alone at eight or nine thousand men, and Duchambon reports to the minister D’Argenson that he was attacked in all by thirteen thousand. His mortifying position was a sharp temptation to exaggerate; but his conduct can only be explained by a belief that the force of his enemy was far greater than it was in fact.
Warren thought that the proposed assault would succeed, and wrote to Pepperrell that he hoped they
would “soon keep a good house together, and give the Ladys of Louisbourg a Gallant Ball.”[153] During his visit to the camp on the day when the flag of truce came out, he made a speech to the New England soldiers, exhorting them to behave like true Englishmen; at which they cheered lustily. Making a visit to the Grand Battery on the same day, he won high favor with the regiment stationed there by the gift of a hogshead of rum to drink his health.
Whether Warren’s “gallant ball” ever took place in Louisbourg does not clearly appear. Pepperrell, on his part, celebrated the victory by a dinner to the commodore and his officers. As the redoubtable Parson Moody was the general’s chaplain and the oldest man in the army, he expected to ask a blessing at the board, and was, in fact, invited to do so,—to the great concern of those who knew his habitual prolixity, and dreaded its effect on the guests. At the same time, not one of them dared rasp his irritable temper by any suggestion of brevity; and hence they came in terror to the feast, expecting an invocation of a good half-hour, ended by open revolt of the hungry Britons; when, to their surprise and relief, Moody said: “Good Lord, we have so much to thank thee for, that time will be too short, and we must leave it for eternity. Bless our food and fellowship upon this joyful occasion, for the sake of Christ our Lord, Amen.” And with that he sat down.[154]
It is said that he had been seen in the French church hewing at the altar and images with the axe that he had brought for that purpose; and perhaps this iconoclastic performance had eased the high pressure of his zeal.[155]