The Great Fortress | Page 5

ordinary soldier to go to in his spare time. The
officers felt the want of a larger outlook even more than the men did;
and neither man nor officer ever went to Louisbourg if he could help it.
When Montcalm, the greatest Frenchman the New World ever saw,
came out to Canada, there was eager competition among the troops at
home to join his army in the field. Officers paid large sums for the
honour of exchanging into any one of the battalions ordered to the front;
and when volunteers were called for from the ranks every single man
stepped forward. But no Montcalm came out to Louisbourg, and
nothing but bounties could get a volunteer. There were only between
five and six hundred regulars in the whole garrison during the first
siege, twenty-five years after the foundation, and nearly half of these
were foreigners, mostly 'pay-fighting Swiss.'
The third factor was the militia. Every able-bodied man, not specially
exempt for other duties, was liable for service in time of war; and the
whole island could be drawn upon for any great emergency at
Louisbourg. Between thirteen and fourteen hundred men were got
under arms for the siege of 1745. Those who lived in Louisbourg had
the advantage of a little slack discipline and a little slack drill. Those in
the country had some practice in the handling of firearms. But, taken all
round, it would be an exaggeration to call them even quarter-trained
soldiers.
The fourth factor was the Indians. They belonged to the Micmac tribe

of the great Algonquin family, and probably numbered no more than
about four thousand throughout the whole French sphere of influence in
what are now the Maritime Provinces. A few hundred braves might
have been ready to take the war-path in the wilds of Cape Breton; but
sieges were not at all in their line, except when they could hang round
the besiegers' inland flanks, on the chance of lifting scalps from
careless stragglers or ambushing an occasional small party gone astray.
As in Canada, so in Cape Breton, the Indians naturally sided with the
French, who disturbed them less and treated them better than the
British did. The British, who enjoyed the inestimable advantage of
superior sea-power, had more goods to exchange. But in every other
respect the French were very much preferred. The handful of French
sent out an astonishingly great number of heroic and sympathetic
missionaries to the natives. The many British sent out astonishingly
few. The Puritan clergy did shamefully little compared with the
wonderful Jesuits. Moreover, while the French in general made the
Indian feel he was at all events a fellow human being, the average
British colonist simply looked on him as so much vermin, to be
destroyed together with the obstructive wilds that harboured him.
The fifth factor, the navy, brings us into contact with world-wide
problems of sea-power which are too far-reaching for discussion here
[Footnote: See in this Series The Winning of Canada and The Passing
of New France, where they are discussed.] Suffice it to say that, while
Louisbourg was an occasional convenience, it had also peculiar dangers
for a squadron from the weaker of two hostile navies, as squadrons
from France were likely to be. The British could make for a dozen
different harbours on the coast. The French could make for only this
one. Therefore the British had only to guard against this one stronghold
if the French were in superior force; they could the more easily
blockade it if the French were in equal force; and they could the more
easily annihilate it if it was defended by an inferior force.
The last factor was the fortress itself. This so-called 'Gibraltar of the
West,' this 'Quebec by the sea,' this 'Dunkirk of New France,' was
certainly first of its kind. But it was first only in a class of one; while
the class itself was far from being a first among classes. The natural

position was vastly inferior to that of Quebec or Gibraltar; while the
fortifications were not to be compared with those of Dunkirk, which, in
one sense, they were meant to replace. Dunkirk had been sold by
Charles II to Louis XIV, who made it a formidable naval base
commanding the straits of Dover. When the Treaty of Utrecht
compelled its demolition, the French tried to redress the balance a little
by building similar works in America on a very much smaller scale,
with a much more purely defensive purpose, and as an altogether
subsidiary undertaking. Dunkirk was 'a pistol held at England's head'
because it was an integral part of France, which was the greatest
military country in the world and second to England alone on the sea.
Louisbourg was no American Dunkirk because it was much weaker