Not till 1757 was the first attempt made to break this last sea link with France. There was a very natural anxiety, among the British on both sides of the Atlantic, to do conspicuously well against Louisbourg. Fort Necessity, Braddock's Defeat, and Montcalm's daring capture of Oswego, coming with cumulative effect, in three successive campaigns, had created a feeling of bitter disappointment in America; while the Black Hole of Calcutta; the loss of Minorca, and, worse still, Byng's failure to bring a British fleet into decisive action, had wounded the national pride in England.
But 1757 turned out to be no better than its disconcerting predecessors. True, England's ally, Frederick the Great, won consummate victories at Rossbach and at Leuthen. But that was at the end of a very desperate campaign. True, also, that Clive won Plassey and took Chandernagore. But those were far away from English-speaking homes; while heavy reverses close at hand brought down the adverse balance. Pitt, the greatest of all civilian ministers of War, was dismissed from office and not reinstated till the British Empire had been without a cabinet for eleven weeks. The French overran the whole of Hanover and rounded up the Duke of Cumberland at Kloster-Seven. Mordaunt and his pettifogging councils of war turned the joint expedition against Rochefort into a complete fiasco; while Montcalm again defeated the British in America by taking Fort William Henry.
The taking of Louisbourg would have been a very welcome victory in the midst of so much gloom. But the British were engaged in party strife at home. They were disunited in America. And neither the naval nor the military leader of the joint expedition against Louisbourg was the proper man to act either alone or with his colleague. Speed was of prime importance. Yet Admiral Holbourne did not sail from England for Halifax till May. General the Earl of Loudoun was slower yet. He drew in the troops from the northern frontier, concentrated them in New York, and laid an embargo on shipping to keep a secret which was already out. Finally, he and Sir Charles Hardy sailed for Halifax to keep their rendezvous with Holbourne, from whom no news had come. They arrived there before him; but his fleet came limping in during the next ten days, after a bad buffeting on its transatlantic voyage.
Loudoun now had nearly 12,000 men, whom he landed and drilled' throughout July. His preparations were so meticulously careful that they even included a vegetable garden, which, though an excellent precaution in its own way, ought to have been left to the commandant of the base. So thought Sir Charles Hay, who was put under arrest for saying that all the money was being spent in fighting sham battles and planting out cabbages. However, a reconnaissance of Louisbourg had been made by Gorham of the Rangers, whose very imperfect report induced Holbourne and Loudoun to get ready to sail. But, just as they were preparing to begin, too late, a Newfoundland vessel came in with captured French dispatches which showed that Admiral La Motte had united his three squadrons in Louisbourg harbour, where he was at anchor with twenty-two ships of the line and several frigates, the whole carrying 1,360 guns. This was correct. But the garrison was exaggerated by at least a third in the same dispatch, which estimated it as numbering over 7000 men.
The lateness of the season, the strength of the French, and the practical certainty of failing to take Louisbourg by forcing the attack home at any cost, were very sensibly held, under existing circumstances, to be sufficient cause for withdrawing the army. The fleet, however, sailed north, in the hope of inducing La Motte to come out for a battle in the open. But, at that particular juncture, La Motte was right not to risk decisive action. A week later he was equally wrong to refuse it. Holbourne's fleet had been dispersed by a September hurricane of extraordinary violence. One ship became a total wreck. Nine were dismasted. Several had to throw their guns overboard. None was fit for immediate service. But La Motte did not even reconnoitre, much less annihilate, his helpless enemy.
Pitt returned to power at the end of June 1757, in time to plan a world-wide campaign for 1758, though not in time to choose the best commanders and to change the whole course of the war. This became possible only in the Empire Year of 1759. The English-speaking peoples have nearly always begun their great wars badly, and have gradually worked up to a climax of victory after being stung into proper leadership and organization by several exasperating failures; and though now in the third year of their most momentous struggle for oversea dominion, they were not even yet altogether prepared.
Nevertheless, Pitt wielded the amphibious might of Britain with a master hand. Sea-power, mercantile and naval, enabled him to 'command the riches of the world' and become the paymaster of many thousand Prussians under Frederick the Great and Ferdinand of Brunswick. He also sent a small British army to the Continent. But he devoted his chief attention to working out a phase of the 'Maritime War' which included India on one flank and the Canadian frontiers on the other. Sometimes with, and sometimes without, a contingent from the Army, the British Navy checkmated, isolated, or defeated the French in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.
The preliminary isolation of Louisbourg was a particularly effective stroke of naval strategy. Even before 1758 began the first French fleet that left for Louisbourg had been shadowed from Toulon and had been shut up in Cartagena. A second French fleet was then sent to help the first one out. But it was attacked on the way and totally defeated. In April the first fleet made another attempt to sail; but it was chased into Rochefort by Hawke and put out of action for the rest of the campaign. The third French fleet did manage to reach Louisbourg. But its admiral, du Chaffault, rightly fearing annihilation in the harbour there, and wishing to keep some touch between Old France and New, sailed for Quebec with most of his best ships.
Quebec and the rest of Canada were themselves on the defensive; for Abercromby was leading 15,000 men—the largest single army America had ever seen—straight up the line of Lake Champlain. Montcalm defeated him at Ticonderoga in July. But that gave no relief to Louisbourg; because the total British forces threatening the Canadian inland frontier were still quite strong enough to keep the French on the strict defensive.
Thus Louisbourg was completely isolated, both by land and sea. It was stronger and more extensive than during the first siege. It had a better governor, Drucour, a better and a larger garrison, more food and ammunition, and, what it formerly lacked altogether, the support of a considerable fleet. Drucour was a gallant soldier. His garrison numbered nearly 3,000 effective regulars, with about 1,000 militiamen and some 500 Indians. Seventeen mortars and over two hundred cannon were mounted on the walls, as well as on the outworks at the Royal, Island, and Lighthouse Batteries. There were thirteen vessels in the fleet, mounting 590 guns, and carrying over 3,500 men. This made the French grand total about 800 guns and 8,000 men. But not all these were really effective. Ships at anchor lose a good deal of their fighting value. Crews are less efficient when ashore than when they are afloat; and the French ships were mostly fought at anchor, while the crews were gradually landed for the defence of the crowded little town. Then, the Indians were comparatively useless in a fort. The militia were not good soldiers anywhere. Moreover, the three kinds of regulars—French, Canadian, and foreign—did not get on very well together; while the fleet, as a whole, got on no better with the army as a whole.