While Wolfe was doing his eight days' work of preparation at the Lighthouse Battery, between the 12th and the 20th, Amherst, whose favourite precept was 'slow and sure,' was performing an even more arduous task by building a road from Flat Point to where he intended to make his trenches. This road meandered over the least bad line that could be found in that country of alternate rock, bog, sand, scrub, bush, and marshy ponds. The working party was always a thousand strong, and shifts, of course, were constant. Boscawen landed marines to man the works along the shore, and bluejackets for any handy-man's job required. This proved of great advantage to the army, which had so many more men set free for other duties. The landing of stores went on from sunrise to sunset, whenever the pounding surf calmed down enough. Landing the guns was, of course, much harder still. It accounted for most of the hundred boats that were dashed to pieces against that devouring shore.
Thorough and persistent as this work was, however, it gave the garrison of Louisbourg little outward sign of what was happening just beyond the knolls and hillocks. Besides, just at this time, when there was a lull before the storm that was soon to burst from Wolfe and Amherst, both sides had more dramatic things to catch the general eye. First, there was the worthy namesake of 'the saucy Arethusa' in the rival British Navy, the Arethuse, whose daring and skilful captain, Vauquelin, had moored her beside the Barachois, or sea-pond, so that he could outflank Amherst's approach against the right land face of Louisbourg. Then, of still more immediate interest was the nimble little Echo, which tried to run the gauntlet of the British fleet on June 18, a day long afterwards made famous on the field of Waterloo. Drucour had entrusted his wife and several other ladies to the captain of the Echo, who was to make a dash for Quebec with dispatches for the governor of Canada. A muffling fog shut down and seemed to promise her safety from the British, though it brought added danger from that wrecking coast. With infinite precautions she slipped out on the ebb, between the French at the Island Battery and Wolfe's strenuous workers at the Lighthouse Point. But the breeze that bore her north also raised the fog enough to let the Juno and Sutherland sight her and give chase. She crowded on a press of sail till she was overhauled, when she fought her captors till her case was hopeless.
Madame Drucour and the other ladies were then sent back to Louisbourg with every possible consideration for their feelings. This act of kindness was remembered later on, when a regular interlude of courtesies followed Drucour's offer to send his own particularly skilful surgeon to any wounded British officer who might need his services. Amherst sent in several letters and messages from wounded Frenchmen, and a special message from himself to Madame Drucour, complimenting her upon her bravery, and begging her acceptance of some West Indian pineapples. Once more the flag of truce came out, this time to return the compliment with a basket of wine. As the gate swung to, the cannon roared again on either side. Amherst's was no unmerited compliment; for Madame Drucour used to mount the ramparts every day, no matter what the danger was, and fire three cannon for the honour of her king. But the French had no monopoly in woman's work. True, there were no officers' wives to play the heroine on the British side. But there were others to play a humbler part, and play it well. In those days each ship or regiment bore a certain proportion of women on their books for laundering and other work which is still done, at their own option, by women 'married on the strength' of the Army. Most of the several hundred women in the besieging fleet and army became so keen to see the batteries armed that they volunteered to team the guns, which, in some cases, they actually did, with excellent effect.
By June 26 Louisbourg had no defences left beyond its own walls, except the reduced French squadron huddled together in the south-west harbour. The more exposed ships had come down on the 21st, after a day's bombardment from Wolfe's terrific battery at Lighthouse Point: 'they in return making an Infernall Fire from all their Broadsides; but, wonderfull to think of, no harm done us.' Five days later every single gun in the Island Battery was dumb. At the same time Amherst occupied Green Hill, directly opposite the citadel and only half a mile away. Yet Drucour, with dauntless resolution, resisted for another month. His object was not to save his own doomed fortress but Quebec.
He needed all his resolution. The British were pressing him on every side, determined to end the siege in time to transfer their force elsewhere. Louisbourg itself was visibly weakening. The walls were already crumbling under Amherst's converging fire, though the British attack had not yet begun in earnest. Surely, thoroughly, and with an irresistible zeal, the besiegers had built their road, dragged up their guns, and begun to worm their way forward, under skilfully constructed cover, towards the right land face of Louisbourg, next to the south-west harbour, where the ground was less boggy than on the left. The French ships fired on the British approaches; but, with one notable exception, not effectively, because some of them masked others, while they were all under British fire themselves, both from the Lighthouse and the Royal Batteries, as well as from smaller batteries along the harbour. Vauquelin, who shares with Iberville the honour of being the naval hero of New France, was the one exception. He fought the Arethuse so splendidly that he hampered the British left attack long enough to give Louisbourg a comparative respite for a few hasty repairs.
But nothing could now resist Boscawen if the British should choose to run in past the demolished Island Battery and attack the French fleet, first from a distance, with the help of the Lighthouse and Royal Batteries, and then hand-to-hand. So the French admiral, des Gouttes, agreed to sink four of his largest vessels in the fairway. This, however, still left a gap; so two more were sunk. The passage was then mistakenly reported to be safely closed. The crews, two thousand strong, were landed and camped along the streets. This caused outspoken annoyance to the army and to the inhabitants, who thought the crews had not shown fight enough afloat, who consequently thought them of little use ashore, who found them in the way, and who feared they had come in without bringing a proper contribution of provisions to the common stock.
The Arethuse was presently withdrawn from her perilous berth next to the British left approach, as she was the only frigate left which seemed to have a chance of running the gauntlet of Boscawen's fleet. Her shot-holes were carefully stopped; and on the night of July 14, she was silently towed to the harbour mouth, whence she sailed for France with dispatches from Drucour and des Gouttes. The fog held dense, but the wind was light, and she could hardly forge ahead under every stitch of canvas. All round her the lights of the British fleet and convoy rose and fell with the heaving rollers, like little embers blurring through the mist. Yet Vauquelin took his dark and silent way quite safely, in and out between them, and reached France just after Louisbourg had fallen.
Meanwhile Drucour had made several sorties against the British front, while Boishebert had attacked their rear with a few hundred Indians, Acadians, and Canadians. Boishebert's attack was simply brushed aside by the rearguard of Amherst's overwhelming force. The American Rangers ought to have defeated it themselves, without the aid of regulars. But they were not the same sort of men as those who had besieged Louisbourg thirteen years before. The best had volunteered then. The worst had been enlisted now. Of course, there were a few good men with some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come, which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon 'em in action. They fall down dead in their own dirt, and desert by battalions, officers and all.'
Drucour's sorties, made by good French regulars, were much more serious than Boishebert's feeble, irregular attack. On the night of July 8, while Montcalm's Ticonderogan heroes were resting on their hard-won field a thousand miles inland, Drucour's best troops crept out unseen and charged the British right. Lord Dundonald and several of his men were killed, while the rest were driven back to the second approach, where desperate work was done with the bayonet in the dark. But Wolfe commanded that part of the line, and his supports were under arms in a moment. The French attack had broken up into a score of little rough-and-tumble fights—bayonets, butts, and swords all at it; friend and foe mixed up in wild confusion. So the first properly formed troops carried all before them. The knots of struggling combatants separated into French and British. The French fell back on their defences. Their friends inside fired on the British; and Wolfe, having regained his ground, retired in the same good order on his lines.
A week later Wolfe suddenly dashed forward on the British left and seized Gallows Hill, within a musket-shot of the French right bastion. Here his men dug hard all night long, in spite of the fierce fire kept up on them at point-blank range. In the morning reliefs marched in, and the digging still continued. Sappers, miners, and infantry reliefs, they never stopped till they had burrowed forward another hundred yards, and the last great breaching battery had opened its annihilating fire. By the 21st both sides saw that the end was near, so far as the walls were concerned.