The English Parliament voted thanks to Amherst and Boscawen; but to Wolfe, who as a subordinate was not mentioned, the thanks of the nation were mainly due. He 'shone extremely at Louisbourg,'23 wrote Horace Walpole, and Walpole owns that he did not love him. Had he been in supreme command, the siege would probably have ended earlier, and greater results would have been achieved. His own view, at any rate, as expressed in a private letter written after his return to England, was that both during the siege and after it valuable time was lost.24 It is certain that when the expedition was sent out, more was hoped from it than the capture of Louisbourg alone. On May 18, 1758, Lord Chesterfield wrote: 'By this time I believe the French are entertained in America with the loss of Cape Breton, and, in consequence of that, Quebec; for we have a force there equal to both those undertakings, and officers there now that will execute what Lord L—— (Loudoun) never would so much as attempt.'25 The French on their side, as we learn from a subsequent letter from Drucour, were aware of the importance of prolonging the siege, in order to prevent Abercromby being reinforced, or an attack being made on Quebec;26 and all honour is due to the memory of the brave French commander for the determined stand which he made. Before the siege ended, Abercromby had been beaten back from Ticonderoga, and breathing time had been given to the defenders of Canada.
23 Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 207 (Letter of Feb. 9, 1759).
24 'We lost time at the siege, still more after the siege, and blundered from the beginning to the end of the campaign' (from a letter written Dec. 1, 1758; Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 465). Similarly, Wolfe wrote from the camp before Louisbourg, on July 27, 1758, the day after the capitulation: 'If this force had been properly managed, there was an end of the French colony in North America in one campaign' (Wright, p. 449).
25 Lord Chesterfield to his son, May 18, 1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 136; Letter 298).
26 See the letter already quoted above, p. 273, note. Drucour is explaining why he would not allow the French ships to leave Louisbourg harbour, 'It was our business to defer the determination of our fate as long as possible. My accounts from Canada assured me that M. de Montcalm was marching to the enemy and would come up with them between July 15 and 20. I said then "if the ships leave the harbour on June 10 (as they desire), the English admiral will enter it immediately after," and we should have been lost before the end of the month, which would have put it in the power of the generals of the besiegers to have employed the months of July and August in sending succours to the troops marching against Canada, and to have entered the river St. Lawrence at the proper season.' In a 'Scheme for taking Louisbourg,' which was submitted to Pitt by Brigadier Waldo (who had been on Pepperell's expedition) on Nov. 7, 1757, fourteen days were given to Louisbourg to hold out when once duly invested, and an attack on Quebec was contemplated as the immediate result of its fall (Brymer's Report on Canadian Archives, 1886, pp. 151-3).
| Wolfe returns to England. |
Yet it was but the end of July when Louisbourg fell, and, if Wolfe had had his way, the ships would have gone on to Quebec. Even Amherst might have gone on but for the bad news from Abercromby, which confirmed his habitual caution, and retarded instead of quickening his movements. One officer, Lord Rollo, was sent to reduce the Île St. Jean; another, Monckton, cleared the valley of the St. John river on the mainland. Wolfe was dispatched to Gaspé Bay and the mouth of the St. Lawrence, to harry the settlers and the fishermen; and when he had accomplished his task, which was little to his taste, he sailed for home angry and disappointed that more had not been done, and that his advice had not been taken. Amherst, in the meantime, had gone with six regiments to reinforce Abercromby at Lake George.
| The Maritime Provinces finally secured to England. |
The capture of Louisbourg secured to England all that should have been hers when the Treaty of Utrecht was being negotiated. The English were now in full occupation of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. More than half of the comparatively small French population of Cape Breton was, at the people's own wish, shipped to France; and of the residents in the Île St. Jean, mainly Acadian refugees, a large proportion was similarly transported, while others found their way to Canada. Cape Breton was attached to Nova Scotia, to be subsequently separated from that province and again rejoined. The Île St. Jean was placed under the same Government, and before the century ended, in the year 1799, its name was changed to Prince Edward Island in honour of the Duke of Kent, the father of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria.
| Abercromby's advance. |