8 According to Haliburton, D'Aunay besieged Madame La Tour in the fort twice, being beaten off the first time. Kingsford gives the date of the siege as 1647.
| Later career of Charles La Tour. |
Ruined and an outlaw, La Tour found his way to Newfoundland, where he tried in vain to enlist the aid of the English governor, Sir David Kirke. He is said also to have visited Quebec and Hudson Bay, and in his distress to have made an ill return for the kindness which had been shown to him at Boston, by raiding a ship from that port and ejecting her crew on to the Nova Scotian coast in the middle of winter. Ultimately, in 1650, D'Aunay died, and La Tour, who must have had a keen eye to business, some little time after married the widow. New complications now arose. A creditor of D'Aunay, Le Borgne by name, came out from France to enforce his claims against D'Aunay's property, and in virtue of those claims to take possession of Acadia. He first attacked Denys9 at Chedabucto, and took him prisoner. He was next preparing to attack La Tour, when events took a wholly different turn, and the English again became masters of Acadia.
9 Denys went to France and secured, in 1654, the restitution of his property, together with a commission as Governor from Cape Canso to Cape Rosiers or Race, i.e. of Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. He was then raided by another Frenchman, Giraudière. He seems to have eventually given up his stations in Cape Breton, and in 1679 was at Quebec, old and blind.
| The English under Sedgwick take Acadia. |
Cromwell, in 1654, sent out an expedition to take Manhattan Island from the Dutch, Major-General Sedgwick being in command. Peace being made with the Netherlands, the force intended to drive the Dutch out of Manhattan was turned against the French in Acadia; and in quick succession, Sedgwick reduced the fort at Penobscot, La Tour's station on the St. John, and Port Royal, where Le Borgne was at the time.10 Mazarin attempted to recover these posts under the twenty-fifth article of the Treaty of Westminster of November 3, 1655; but, less complaisant than the Kings who preceded or who followed him, Cromwell refused to entertain the proposals for a transfer.
10 Sedgwick was shortly afterwards sent to Jamaica, where he died in June, 1656. In Appendix xxviii to Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell, reference is made to the taking of the French forts in Acadia, with the following characteristic but not very accurate note: 'Oliver kept his forts and his Acadie through all French treaties for behoof of his New Englanders. Not till after the Restoration did the country become French again, and continue such for a century or so.'
| La Tour and Temple become owners of Acadia. Death of La Tour. |
La Tour now turned to account the fact that he had been created a Nova Scotian baronet and received a grant from Alexander; he became a British subject; and on August 10, 1656, letters patent were issued by which he became, under the name of Sir Charles La Tour, joint owner of Acadia with Sir Thomas Temple and William Crowne. Very shortly afterwards he sold his interest to Temple, but appears to have remained in Acadia, where he died in 1666.
| Acadia restored to France by the Treaty of Breda. |