It will be seen, later, that Shirley’s timely application to the ministry, on behalf of Nova Scotia, involved the fate of Louisburg itself. Orders were promptly sent out to Commodore Warren, who was in command of a cruising squadron in the West Indies, to proceed as early as possible to Nova Scotia, for the purpose of protecting our settlements there, or of distressing the enemy, as circumstances might require.
Shirley himself had also written to Warren, requesting him to do this very thing, at the same time the ministry were notified, though it was yet too early to know the result of either application. All eyes were now opened to Louisburg’s dangerous power. But, come what might, Shirley was evidently a man who would leave nothing undone.
[1]Louisburg had cost the enormous sum of 30,000,000 livres or £1,200,000 sterling.
[2]Pepperell was besieging Louisburg at the same time the French were Tournay.
[3]Canso was taken by Duvivier, May 13, 1744. The captors burnt everything, carrying the captives to Louisburg, where they remained till autumn, when they were sent to Boston. These prisoners were able to give very important information concerning the fortress, its garrison, and its means of defence.
V
“LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN”
However Shirley’s efforts to avert a present danger might succeed, nobody saw more clearly than he did that his measures only went half way toward their mark. With Louisburg intact, the enemy might sweep the coasts of New England with their expeditions, and her commerce from the seas. The return of spring, when warlike operations might be again resumed, was therefore looked forward to at Boston with the utmost uneasiness. Merchants would not risk their ships on the ocean. Fishermen dared not think of putting to sea for their customary voyages to the Grand Banks or the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Here was a state of things which a people who lived by their commerce and fisheries could only contemplate with the most serious forebodings. It was fully equivalent to a blockade of their ports, a stoppage of their industries, with consequent stagnation paralyzing all their multitudinous occupations.
Public Opinion aroused.
Naturally the subject became a foremost matter of discussion in the official and social circles, in the pulpits, and in the tavern clubs of the New England capital. It was the serious topic in the counting-house and the table-talk at home. It drifted out among the laboring classes, who had so much at stake, with varied embellishment. It went out into the country, gathering to itself fresh rumors like a rolling snowball. In all these coteries, whether of the councillors over their wine, of the merchants around their punch-bowls, of the smutty smith at his forge, or the common dock-laborer, the same conclusion was reached, and constantly reiterated—Louisburg must be taken!—Yes; Louisburg must be taken! Upon this decision the people stood as one man.
It did not, however, enter into the minds of even the most sanguine advocates of this idea that they themselves would be shortly called upon to make it effective in the one way possible. Such a proposal would have been laughed at, at first. The general voice was that the land and naval forces of the kingdom ought to be employed for the reduction of Louisburg, because no others were available; but, meantime, a public opinion had been formed which only wanted a proper direction to turn it into a force capable of doing what it had decided upon. There was but one man in the province who was equal to this task.