The Great Fortress | Page 3

were sold to New
England traders and replaced by inferior substitutes.
Of course, direct trade between the opposing colonies was strictly
forbidden by both the French and British navigation acts. But the
Louisbourg officials winked at anything that would enrich them
quickly, while the New Englanders pushed in eagerly wherever a profit
could be made by any means at all. Louisbourg was intended to be the
general rendezvous of the transatlantic French fishing vessels; a great
port of call between France, Canada, and the French West Indies; and a
harbour of refuge in peace and war. But the New England shipping was
doing the best trade at Louisbourg, and doing it in double contraband,
within five years of the foundation. Cod caught by Frenchmen from
Louisbourg itself, French wines and brandy brought out from France,
tobacco and sugar brought north from the French West Indies, all
offered excellent chances to enterprising Yankees, who came in with
foodstuffs and building materials of their own. One vessel sailed for
New York with a cargo of claret and brandy that netted her owners a
profit of a hundred per cent, even after paying the usual charges
demanded by the French custom-house officials for what really was a
smuggler's licence.
Fishing, smuggling, and theft were the three great industries of
Louisbourg. The traders shared the profits of the smuggling. But the
intendant and his officials kept most of the choice thieving for
themselves.
The genuine settlers--and a starveling crew they were--wrested their
debt-laden livelihood from the local fishing. This was by no means bad
in itself. But, like other fishermen before and since, they were in
perpetual bondage to the traders, who took good care not to let accounts
get evened up. A happier class of fishermen made up the engages, who

were paid by government to 'play settler' for a term of years, during
which they helped to swell the official census of uncongenial
Louisbourg. The regular French fishing fleet of course returned to
France at the end of every season, and thus enjoyed a full spell of
French delights on shore.
The Acadians supplied Louisbourg with meat and vegetables. These
were brought in by sea; for there were no roads worth mentioning; nor,
in the contemporary state of Cape Breton, was there any need for roads.
The farmers were few, widely scattered, and mostly very poor. The
only prosperous settlement within a long day's march was situated on
the beautiful Mira river. James Gibson, a Boston merchant and
militiaman, who served against Louisbourg in 1745, was much taken
by the appearance of an establishment 'at the mouth of a large salmon
fishery,' by one 'very handsome house, with two large barns, two large
gardens, and fine fields of corn,' and by another with 'six rooms on a
floor and well furnished.' He adds that 'in one of the barns were fifteen
loads of hay, and room sufficient for sixty horses and cattle.' In 1753
the intendant sent home a report about a proposed 'German' settlement
near the 'Grand Lake of Mira.' A new experiment was then being tried,
the importation of settlers from Alsace-Lorraine. But five years
afterwards Cape Breton had been lost to France for ever.
The fact is that the French never really colonized Cape Breton at large,
and Louisbourg least of all. They knew the magnificent possibilities of
Sydney harbour, but its mere extent prevented their attempting to make
use of it. They saw that the whole island was a maritime paradise, with
seaports in its very heart as well as round its shores. But they were a
race of gallant, industrious landsmen at home, with neither the wish nor
the aptitude for a nautical life abroad. They could not have failed to see
that there was plenty of timber in some parts of the island, and that the
soil was fit to bear good crops of grain in others. A little prospecting
would also have shown them iron, coal, and gypsum. But their official
parasites did not want to see smuggling and peculation replaced by
industry and trade. Nothing, indeed, better proves how little they
thought of making Ile Royale a genuine colony than their utter failure
to exploit any one of its teeming natural resources in forest, field, or

mine.
What the French did with extraneous resources and artificial aids in the
town of Louisbourg is more to the purpose in hand. The problem of
their position, and of its strength and weakness in the coming clash of
arms, depended on six naval, military, and governmental factors, each
one of which must be considered before the whole can be appreciated.
These six factors were--the government, the garrison, the militia, the
Indians, the navy, and the fortress.
Get rich and go home. The English-speaking peoples, whose ancestors
once went to