THE NECK OF THE ACADIAN PENINSULA.
E. Old French War.—This was begun in April, 1755. There was a declaration of war against the Penobscots, Nov. 3, 1755. (Mass. Archives, xxxii. 690.)
Meanwhile, towards the end of April, 1755, Cornwallis at Halifax had sent Lawrence[971] to the neck of the peninsula[972] of Nova Scotia to fortify himself on English ground, opposite the French post at Beauséjour. Instigated by the French priest, Le Loutre, the Micmacs[973] were so threatening and the French were so alarmingly near that the English, far outnumbered, withdrew; but they returned in the autumn, better equipped, and began the erection of Fort Lawrence. The French attempted an “indirect” resistance through the Indians and some indianized Acadians, and were, in the end, driven off; but not until the houses and barns of neighboring settlers had been burned, with the aim of compelling the Acadians to fly to the French for shelter and sustenance.[974] The French now began a fort on the Beauséjour hill. A petty warfare and reprisals, not unmixed with treachery, became chronic, and were well set off with a background of more portentous rumors.[975] It happened that letters crossed each other, or nearly so, passing between Lawrence (now governor) and Shirley, suggesting an attack on Beauséjour. So the conquest was easily planned. Shirley commissioned Col. John Winslow to raise 2,000 men, and but for delay in the arrival of muskets from England this force would have cast anchor near Fort Lawrence on the first of May instead of the first of June. Monckton, a regular officer, who had been Lawrence’s agent on the Boston mission, held the general command over Winslow, a provincial officer. The fort surrendered before the siege trains got fairly to work. Parkman, who gives a vivid picture of the confusion of the French, refers for his authorities to the Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760; Pichon’s Cape Breton, and the journal of Pichon, as cited by Murdoch in his Hist. of Nova Scotia.[976] The captured fort became Fort Cumberland; Fort Gaspereau, on the other side of the isthmus, surrendered without a blow. Rouse, the Boston privateersman, who had commanded the convoy from Boston, was sent to capture the fort at the mouth of the St. John, and the Indians, whom the French had deserted on Rouse’s approach, joyfully welcomed him.
FORT BEAUSÉJOUR AND ADJACENT COUNTRY.