To these ill-boding events, moreover, the loss of Minorca was now added, until England at last refused to endure longer the incapacity of Newcastle, and clamoured for the appointment of Pitt. "England has long been in labour," commented Frederick of Prussia, "and at last she has brought forth a man." From that moment the fortune of war was changed. Corruption and divided counsels no longer paralysed the government, and the Great Commoner, healthy minded, rugged, and enthusiastic, now stood to middle-class England as an embodiment of strength and purpose, which sent new blood coursing through her veins and braced her for the gathering storm.
To America, where the clouds were darkest, Pitt first turned his attention. Louisbourg, Carillon, Duquesne, and Quebec must be brought low, if, as was his purpose, French power was not only to be crushed but absolutely destroyed. And towards this goal Pitt moved swiftly at the head of a nation as resolute as himself. Loudon and Webb were instantly recalled, and Amherst, Wolfe, and Howe were appointed in their places, the last being ordered to second Abercrombie, whom Pitt had reluctantly retained in his command.
The years since 1745 had been years of growing strength for Louisbourg, and in 1758 it almost equalled Quebec itself in importance. Its capable commandant, the Chevalier de Drucour, counted four thousand citizens and three thousand men-at-arms for his garrison; while twelve battleships, mounting five hundred and forty-four guns, and manned by three thousand sailors and marines, rode at anchor in the rock-girt harbour, the fortress itself, with its formidable outworks, containing two hundred and nineteen cannon and seventeen mortars. Bold men only could essay the capture of such a fortress, but such were Wolfe, Amherst, and Admiral Boscawen, whose work it was to do.
The fleet and transports sailed from Halifax, bearing eleven thousand six hundred men full of spirit and faith in their commanders. All accessible landing-places at Louisbourg had been fortified by the French; but in spite of this precaution and a heavy surf, Wolfe's division gained the beach and carried the redoubts at Freshwater Cove. A general landing having been thus effected, Wolfe marched round the flank of the fortress to establish a battery at Lighthouse Point. The story may only be outlined here. First the French were forced to abandon Grand Battery, which frowned over the harbour, then the Island Battery was silenced. On the forty-third day of the siege, a frigate in the harbour was fired by shells, and drifting from her moorings, destroyed two sister ships. Four vessels which had been sunk at the mouth of the harbour warded Boscawen's fleet from the assault, but did not prevent six hundred daring blue-jackets from seizing the Prudent and Bienfaisant, the two remaining ships of the French squadron.
Meanwhile, zigzag trenches crept closer and closer to the walls, upon which the heavy artillery now played at short range with deadly effect. Bombs and grenades hissed over the shattering ramparts and burst in the crowded streets; roundshot and grape tore their way through the wooden barracks; while mortars and musketry poured a hail of shell and bullet upon the brave defenders. Nothing could save Louisbourg now that Pitt's policy of Thorough had got headway. On the 26th of July a white flag fluttered over the Dauphin's Bastion; and by midnight of that date Drucour had signed Amherst's terms enjoining unconditional surrender.
Then the work of demolition commenced. The mighty fortress, which had cast a dark shadow over New England for almost half a century, "the Dunkirk of America," must stand no longer as a menace. An army of workmen laboured for months with pick and spade and blasting-powder upon those vast fortifications; yet nothing but an upheaval of nature itself could obliterate all traces of earthwork, ditch, glacis, and casemate, which together made up the frowning fortress of Louisbourg. To-day grass grows on the Grand Parade, and daisies blow upon the turf-grown bastions; but who may pick his way over those historic mounds of earth without a sigh for the buried valour of bygone years!
In the Richelieu valley, meanwhile, the armies of England and France had met in even fiercer conflict. Montcalm lay intrenched at Carillon at the head of the battalions of La Sarre, Languedoc, Berry, Royal Roussillon, La Reine, Béarn, and Guienne, three thousand six hundred men in all. To this high rocky battlement overlooking Lake Champlain, the French had hastily added a rugged outwork of felled trees on the crest of a flanking hill. The ridge thus fortified now looked down upon a valley stripped of its timber, but covered with rugged stumps and a maze of stakes and branches, which, while affording no cover for an enemy, presented insuperable obstacles to his advance.
On came Abercrombie at the head of fifteen thousand men, offering the most imposing military spectacle yet seen in the New World. They advanced in three divisions—the regulars in the centre, commanded by the gallant Lord Howe, and a blue column of provincials on either flank. To the martial music of their bands or the shrill notes of the bagpipe they gaily marched through the midsummer woods, the Forty-Second Highlanders in the van.
As the army drew near to the French position, Lord Howe pressed forward to reconnoitre the approaches. This young nobleman, although but thirty-four years of age, had already reached the top of his profession. Keen and daring, with a hand of steel in a glove of velvet, and a magnetism that charmed the regular and the provincial alike, Lord Howe had become the soul of Abercrombie's army; and as he fell in this engagement, shot through the breast by a skirmisher's bullet, that army at once declined to its ruin.
Notwithstanding this loss, Abercrombie swept on along the Indian trail; and when Montcalm looked down from the rough ramparts of Carillon upon that splendid pageant, all hope of saving his stronghold was banished. All hope save one. The indiscretion of the English General might lead him to decide upon assault instead of siege. The inept Abercrombie did not disappoint him—Carillon was to be taken at the point of the bayonet!