The Great Fortress | Page 6

in
itself, because it was more purely defensive, because the odds of
population and general resources as between the two colonies were
fifteen to one in favour of the British, and because the preponderance of
British sea-power was even greater in America than it was in Europe.
The harbour of Louisbourg ran about two miles north-east and
south-west, with a clear average width of half a mile. The two little
peninsulas on either side of the entrance were nearly a mile apart. But
the actual fairway of the entrance was narrowed to little more than a
clear quarter of a mile by the reefs and islands running out from the
south-western peninsula, on which the fortress stood. This low, nubbly
tongue of land was roughly triangular. It measured about three-quarters
of a mile on its longest side, facing the harbour, over half a mile on the
land side, facing the enemy's army, and a good deal under half a mile
on the side facing the sea. It had little to fear from naval bombardment
so long as the enemy's fleet remained outside, because fogs and storms
made it a very dangerous lee shore, and because, then as now, ships
would not pit themselves against forts unless there was no rival fleet to
fight, and unless other circumstances were unusually propitious.
The entrance was defended by the Island Battery, which flanked the
approach with thirty-nine guns, and the Royal Battery, which directly
faced it with thirty guns. Some temporary lines with a few more guns
were prepared in time of danger to prevent the enemy from landing in
Gabarus Bay, which ran for miles south-west of Louisbourg. But the

garrison, even with the militia, was never strong enough to keep the
enemy at arm's length from any one of these positions. Moreover, the
north-east peninsula, where the lighthouse stood, commanded the
Island Battery; and the land side of Louisbourg itself was commanded
by a range of low hillocks less than half a mile away.
It was this land side, containing the citadel and other works, which so
impressed outsiders with the idea of impregnable strength. The glacis
was perfect--not an inch of cover wherever you looked; and the
approach was mostly across a slimy bog. The ditch was eighty feet
wide. The walls rose over thirty feet above the ditch. There were
embrasures for one hundred and forty-eight guns all round; though not
more than ninety were ever actually mounted. On the seaward face
Louisbourg was not so strongly fortified; but in the centre of this face
there were a deep ditch and high wall, with bastions on each immediate
flank, and lighter defences connecting these with the landward face. A
dozen streets were laid out, so as to divide the whole town into
conveniently square little blocks. The area of the town itself was not
much more than a hundred acres altogether--rather close quarters for
several thousand men, women, and children during a siege.
If reports and memoranda could defend a fortress, then Louisbourg
ought indeed to have been impregnable. Of course every official trust
entails endless correspondence. But, quite apart from the stated returns
that go through 'the usual channel of communication,' reams and reams
of paper were filled with special reports, inspections, complaints, and
good advice. The governor wrote home, most elaborately, in 1724,
about the progress of the works. Ten years later he announced the
official inauguration of the lighthouse on the 1st of April. In 1736 the
chief item was the engineer's report on the walls. Next year the great
anxiety was about a dangerous famine, with all its attendant distress for
the many and its shameless profits for the few. On November 23, 1744,
reinforcements and provisions were asked for, because intelligence had
been received that the New Englanders were going to blockade
Louisbourg the following summer. At the same time, the discontent of
the garrison had come to a head, and a mutiny had broken out because
the extra working pay had not been forthcoming. After this the

discipline became, not sterner, but slacker than ever, especially among
the hireling Swiss. On February 8, 1745, within three months of the
first siege, a memorandum was sent in to explain what was still
required to finish the works begun twenty-five years before.
But, after all, it was not so much the defective works that really
mattered as the defective garrison behind them. English-speaking
civilians who have written about Louisbourg have sometimes taken
partial account of the ordinary Frenchman's repugnance to oversea duty
in time of peace and of the little worth of hireling foreigners in time of
war. But they have always ignored that steady drip, drip, drip of
deterioration which reduces the efficiency of every garrison condemned
to service in remote and thoroughly uncongenial countries. Louisbourg