The Acadians claimed to be exempt from bearing arms in defence of their country and their country's rulers, in other words against the French and the Indian allies of the French. They were not free agents; they were terrorized by the French Government and the French priests, notorious among whom was a ruffian named Le Loutre, Vicar-General of Acadia. Spiritual excommunication and Indian hostility threatened them, if they acted with loyalty to the British King, whose subjects they had been for nearly forty years. How faithless and unscrupulous was the policy of the French is abundantly shown by official dispatches, proving that the Canadian Governor, La Jonquière, with the sanction of the French Government at home, accepted and endorsed Le Loutre's villainous schemes for preventing the Acadians from taking the full oath of allegiance, and for instigating the Indians of the peninsula to murder the English settlers. Cornwallis treated the Acadians with kindly firmness. Some of them asked to be allowed to leave the country, and he promised permission to those who should obtain passports, when peace and tranquillity were restored. For the moment he declined to allow them to cross the frontier, as it would mean sending them among French and Indians, who would compel them to bear arms against the English Government.
| Beaubassin occupied by English troops. Fort Lawrence. |
The frontier, as far as any line was provisionally recognized, was a little stream on the isthmus of Chignecto. On the mainland side the French had occupied a hill called Beauséjour, on the Nova Scotian side was the village of Beaubassin. In April, 1750, Cornwallis sent a force of some 400 men under Major Lawrence to occupy a position at or near Beaubassin, and to guard the isthmus. On his arrival, Lawrence found Beaubassin in flames. Le Loutre and his Indians had set fire to the place, and compelled the hapless residents to cross over to the French lines. The English left, but returned in September in stronger force; their landing was disputed by Le Loutre's savages, who were driven off, and a fort was built and garrisoned, called after the name of the commander, Fort Lawrence.
| Murder of Captain Howe. |
French and English now faced each other across a narrow stream, the French completed their fort at Beauséjour, and the temper of Le Loutre's Indians was shown by a horrible incident, the murder of an English officer, Captain Howe. Howe had gone out in answer to a flag of truce, which appeared from the French lines; but the bearer of the white flag was an Indian disguised in French uniform, who lured the Englishman into an ambush, where he was mortally wounded. The French themselves attributed this act of wanton wickedness to Le Loutre.
| Colonel Lawrence. Acadian emigration. |
In 1752 Cornwallis returned to England, and was succeeded as Governor of Acadia by Colonel Hopson, who had been in command at Louisbourg, when that town was given back to France; the latter was, in the autumn of 1753, succeeded by Colonel Lawrence. The Acadian population, which in 1749 numbered between 12,000 and 13,000 souls, five years later was reduced to little more than 9,000. The emigration which caused the reduction in numbers was largely the result of a French terror, and on the mainland, or in the Île St. Jean, the unfortunate emigrants endured misery unknown in their old homes in Acadia. Those who find in the subsequent rooting up of Acadian settlement an instance of English cruelty with little parallel in history, would do well to remember that the process had already been going on at the hands of the French; and the lot of the Acadians under the French flag was in no wise preferable to the fortunes of those who were carried, as it were, into captivity in the English colonies.
| De Vergor. Surrender of the French fort Beauséjour. |
The catastrophe, of which so much has been made in prose and verse, happened in the year 1755. It was not an isolated incident, but part of a general plan—which for the time miscarried—of breaking the French power in North America. The commandant of the French fort at Beauséjour was De Vergor, son of Duchambon who surrendered Louisbourg in 1745. He owed his position to Bigot, the notorious Intendant of Canada. By his side, and with as much or more authority, was Le Loutre, the evil genius of Acadia. The French contemplated attack on the English: Lawrence, in communication with Shirley, determined to forestall them. Some two thousand men came up from Massachusetts, enlisted under John Winslow—a name which New Englanders honoured—and, landing at the isthmus early in June, joined the English garrison at Fort Lawrence, the whole force being under Colonel Monckton. In a few days' time the bombardment of the French fort began; but, before there had been any serious fighting, De Vergor surrendered. The garrison marched out with the honours of war, and Fort Beauséjour was renamed Fort Cumberland.