The Great Fortress | Page 9

against the Spaniards during the last few years, as well as a certain amount of downright piracy in time of peace, whenever a Frenchman or a Spaniard could be safely taken at a disadvantage. So Shirley asked Commodore Warren, commanding the North American station, to lend his aid. Warren had married an American and was very well disposed towards the colonists. But, having no orders from England, he at first felt obliged to refuse. Within a short time, however, he was given a free hand by the Imperial government, which authorized him to concert measures with Shirley 'for the annoyance of the enemy, and for his Majesty's Service in North America.'
Warren immediately sailed for Canso with three men-of-war and sent for another to join him. His wait for orders made him nearly three weeks later than the New Englanders in arriving at the rendezvous. But this delay, due to no fault of his own, was really an advantage to the New England militia, who thus had a chance of learning a little more drill and discipline. His four vessels carried 180 guns and 1,150 men at full strength. The thirteen Provincial armed vessels carried more than 1,000 men. No exact returns were ever made out for the transports. But as '68 lay at anchor' in Canso harbour, while others 'came dropping in from day to day,' as there were 4,270 militiamen on board, in addition to all the stores, and as the French counted '96 transports' making for Gabarus Bay, there could not have been less than 100, while the crews could hardly have mustered less than an average of 20 men each. The grand total, at the beginning of the expedition, could not, therefore, have been less than 8,000 men, of all sorts put together--over 4,000 American Provincial militia, over 1,000 men of the Royal Navy, quite 1,000 men aboard the Provincial fighting vessels, and at least 2,000 more as crews to work the transports.
May 1, the first Sunday the Provincials spent at Canso, was a day of great and multifarious activity, both sacred and profane. Parson Moody, the same who had taken the war-path with his iconoclastic hatchet, delivered a tremendous philippic from the text, 'Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.' Luckily for his congregation he had the voice of a Stentor, as there were several mundane competitors in an adjoining field, each bawling the word of command at the full pitch of his lungs. A conscientious diarist, though full of sabbatarian zeal, was fain to admit that 'Severall sorts of Busnesses was a-Going on: Sum a-Exercising, Sum a-Hearing o' the Preaching.'
On May 5 Warren sailed into Canso. The Provincials thought the date of his arrival a very happy omen, as it fell on what was then, according to the Old Style calendar, St George's Day, April 23. After a conference with Pepperrell he hurried off to begin the blockade of Louisbourg. A week later, May 21, the transports joined him there, and landed their militiamen for one of the most eccentric sieges ever known.
While the British had been spending the first four months of 1745 in preparing 8,000 men, the French authorities in Louisbourg, whose force was less than 2,000, had been wasting the same precious time in ridiculous councils of war. It is a well-known saying that councils of war never fight. But these Louisbourg councils did not even prepare to fight. The news from Boston was not heeded. Worse yet, no attention was paid to the American scouting vessels, which had been hovering off the coast for more than a month. The bibulous du Quesnel had died in October. But his successor, du Chambon, was no better as a commandant. Perhaps the kindest thing to say of du Chambon is that he was the foolish father of a knavish son--of that du Chambon de Vergor who, in the next war, surrendered Fort Beausejour without a siege and left one sleepy sentry to watch Wolfe's Cove the night before the Battle of the Plains.
It is true that du Chambon had succeeded to a thoroughly bad command. He had no naval force whatever; and the military force had become worse instead of better. The mutiny in December had left the 560 regulars in a very sullen frame of mind. They knew that acquisitive government officials were cheating them out of their proper rations of bacon and beans. The officials knew that the soldiers knew. And so suspicion and resentment grew strong between them. The only other force was the militia, which, with certain exceptions, comprised every male inhabitant of Cape Breton who could stand on two legs and hold a musket with both hands. There were boys in their early teens and old men in their sixties. Nearly 1,800 ought to have