Nova Scotia (19 page)

   
King Louis XV of France had his share of weaknesses. He
laboured over trivial matters and had a hard time making up his
mind about important things. He was prone to appoint inadequate
ministers who soon were overworked, resulting in a high turnover of
ministers of war, marine and foreign affairs. As with most royal
courts of the day, Louis’ was rife with intrigue practised by
various sycophants, political climbers and self-serving schemers
who succeeded in interfering with sensible
decision-making.

   
Locked into a defence mentality, the French military officers
still favoured the impossible ideal of an invulnerable fortress.
Unlike in the days of Louis XIV, the French army was now weakened
and staffed with incompeternt officers. Commissions were granted
through money and connections. The military arms were primarily
muskets and bayonets, adequate for close range but not much else.
The navy was in somewhat better shape than the poorly organized
army. Their ships might even have been superior to the English but
there were fewer of them and few sailors to man them. To bolster
their navy for war, France commandeered 800 merchant ships with
their 3,000h seamen. This must have taken its toll on public
support from the merchants as well as lowering the overall morale
of those hustled into war. Epidemics were raging in various French
ports where the navy docked and some .men went AWOL just to avoid
disease. Then the naval officers had to settle for whatever
landlubbers they could press into service to help sail ships they
were totally unfamiliar with.

   
In May of 1755, a fleet of French ships with
more than 4,000 men left France for Louisbourg and would prepare to
fight the English at Halifax if necessary. Governor Lawrence found
out about this and reckoned that Halifax was unprepared and
undermanned with only 3,000 men at its disposal to stave off an
attack. British Admiral Boscawen met some French ships off the
coast of Newfoundland and captured two of them. This seemed to
discourage the French from an outright attack on Halifax.
The
Alcide
and the
Lys
were ushered
into Halifax Harbour with 1,200 soldiers and sailors as prisoners
to be jailed on George’s Island. The English also had the good luck
of having captured a French war chest worth about £30,000. What
scared them, however, was a shipment on board of 500 scalping
knives that were to be distributed to the Mi’kmaq and the Acadians.
While the English had themselves employed the barbaric technique of
scalping for their own colonial purposes, they were shocked and
appalled to think that the French were planning to use the same
tactic to run the English out of Nova Scotia.

The Privateers of
Boomtown

The presence of the French at
Beausejour had continued to nag at governors in both Nova Scotia
and New England. The French fort was actually in pretty bad
structural condition and the governor there, Louis Du Pont
Duchambon de Vergor, was less than capable of keeping up a solid
military presence. When Massachusetts volunteers and British
regulars under Robert Monckton laid siege to Beausejour, the
governor tried desperately to rally the Acadians to fight with him
but they were loath to get involved in the bloodshed. Many of them
abandoned Beausejour for good reason. Those who stayed later
regretted the decision and many refused to follow the French
commands. Less than two weeks into the siege, Monckton had his men
open fire on the fort and by the sixteenth of June, 1755, the
governor admitted defeat. The English promptly renamed the place
Fort Cumberland.

   
In July of that year, Lawrence was still
panicked about those scalping knives and worried about the loyalty
of the Acadians. The incidents at Beausejour had convinced him that
these French-speaking farmers and cattlemen were not to be trusted.
Unwilling to accept the point of view of the Acadians – they just
wanted to be left alone and were more than willing to remain
neutral – Lawrence called for their expulsion. Next, Halifax
prepared for full-scale war. The streets were filled with British
redcoats, American bluecoats, all sorts of sailors and New England
rangers. Privateering was also on the rise. Anyone willing to take
the chance could go capture a French (or any other French-friendly)
ship and keep most of the goods, all in the name of the British
Crown. This bloodthirsty entrepreneurial opportunity attracted
businessman Joshua Mauger. He prepped the
Mosquito
for
such work and proceeded to capture a Dutch merchant ship with
French supplies. 7

   
A greedy lot, the men in Mauger’s employ tortured the Dutch
seamen, putting thumbscrews to the crew and passengers to find out
about possible hidden money. According to Thomas Raddall, Mauger’s
second mate grabbed one of the screaming victims as he was being
tortured with the thumbscrew and danced him around deck while
another one of the men played the fiddle. A merry lot they were,
these Halifax pirates who hoped to profit all they could from
hostilities between the French and English.

   
At least fifteen privateer ships were using Halifax as home
port for their forays, bringing in a great influx of merchandise to
be auctioned off to the highest bidder. St. Paul’s Church found
itself the recipient of an organ destined for a Spanish settlement
further south. *

   
Halifax was a boom town. Previously with a population of less
than 2,000, there were now 3,000 new soldiers and a couple of
thousand seamen coming in with the fleet. All this influx of
people, prosperity, stolen goods, stolen booze and the like made
for a wild and overcrowded town with a plethora of criminal
activity – and certainly not enough women to go around to entertain
the rowdy men. 

The Advantage of Allies

When the war began, the French had
three forces: colonial regular troops, militia and Indian allies.
The colonial regulars were actually in a bit better shape than
their counterparts back home on the continent. Commissions on this
side of the Atlantic were granted on merit and the training was
decent. Twenty of these companies were in Louisbourg and twenty-one
in Louisiana. By the time the Seven Years’ War flared up, these men
had plenty of fighting experience and they had also learned
something of guerrilla-type warfare from their Native American
friends. Unlike most British regiments, they could live off the
land, strike quickly and then disappear,  using the forest as
cover and even sanctuary.

   
On the other hand, the militia men were treated like cheap
labour or even cannon fodder. The men were often conscripted from
French villages and forced to serve without pay. They didn’t
particularly like taking orders and especially didn’t like waiting
for orders when under fire. Sometimes they rudely shot back at the
enemy before the command. It was also common for these soldiers to
express their displeasure with their situation by fleeeing in the
midst of battle. While French history may not paint them as heroic,
I think it’s at least common courtesy to consider them as being
sensible in these circumstances.

   
In battle, the French officers did not always consider their
Native allies reliable. Mi’kmaq warriors were not always willing to
play war by the stiff etiquette of European warfare. Better to
retreat and hide, wait for an advantage to attack on another day,
rather than sacrifice one’s life in a losing position. The French
soldiers soon began to learn from such unconventional notions. As
the English became more aware of the combined strengths and uncouth
but effective strategies of their opponents, they also became ever
more cautious about getting involved in wilderness battles with an
enemy that didn’t always play by European rules.

   
Always at home on the land in any part of Nova Scotia, the
Mi’kmaq were excellent scouts and good spies, even able to take
prisoners from the English camps and gather information from their
captives. As a result, the French were usually better informed than
the British.

Full-Scale Attack

   
The British had launched into their full-scale attack on New
France in 1754 without a formal declaration of war. While the
British sent two battalions of regular troops to America, the
French reinforced Louisbourg with two battalions from France. Each
battalion, it’s worth noting, had a grenadier company f – a band of
elite soldiers who would stand behind the line of attack with
bayonets fixed to insure none of their own men would retreat once
the battle had begun. The military liked to look after its
own.

   
Most of the French forts in America, like the one at
Beausejour, were really not prepared for a full-on assault from the
British Army. Louisbourg was more substantial but still plagued by
structural and organizational problems. In charge at Louisbourg was
Augustin de Boschenry de Drucour. Baron Jean-Armand de Dieskau was
in command of all battalions in the vicinity. At the top was
Governor-General FrançTois-Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil.
In 1756 the Marquis de Montcalm replaced Dieskau.

   
The French regular troops were paid much better than the
colonial fighters who were defending their homeland. Any new
soldiers coming from France obviously wanted to join the ranks of
the higher-paid. All this led to tesnsion between the two factions,
who would be fighting side by side for unequal pay. The French
regulars, however, despite the financial perks, weren’t fond of
garrison life. They were plagued by mosquitoes and black flies as
well and were often depressed at being away from France for so
long. News from home was rare and they had a hard time adjusting to
the alliance that had been struck between the colonials and the
Mi’kmaq. War on the continent had been so much more civilized.
There they had grown accustomed to comfortable transportation to
the front as well as the regular attendance of hospital and baggage
wagons. Back home there had been cosy war e*ncampments with
servants, wine, clean linen and good food. Now they were in the
wilderness with no amenities whatsoever. They had to carry their
own food, consort with “savages,” swim rivers and fight side by
side with the colonials. And on top of that, the rules of war were
not being adhered to. All this amounted to a total affront to their
continental dignity.

   
The French militiamen saw the better-paid elite soldiers as
wimps and the French regulars looked down on their colonial
counterparts as crude and unkempt. The locals also recognized that
the overall defensive strategy adhered to by the bigwigs wasn’t
going to work, but they had no power or plan to change
it.

   
Vaudreuil complained to Paris that the French regulars were
reluctant to leave the relative comfort of camp and actually fight.
With good reason, he saw a personnel crisis looming. As soon as the
present fighting stopped, he wanted all French regular troops back
in France and out of his territory.

   
The French were far outnumbered by the British troops, but
that may not be what lost them the war. Historians argue that it
may well have been leadership. Montcalm has taken some blame for
bad decisions that led to the cfall of Quebec. But there were other
factors. As the war heated up, the British troops actually improved
while the French deteriorated, perhaps as a result of the morale
issues brought on by the French regulars. The war was popular in
England – nothing like a good war to revitalize the old empire.
Short-term enlistment was introduced, which was not really such a
bad deal if you were lucky enough to survive and return home. The
British hadn also hired skilful mercenaries, the Swiss in
particular, who were good at adapting to the North American
wilderness.

   
French reinforcements were less prepared, many of them hauled
off the streets and sent without enough training into battle.
Mutinies and looting among the rabble were common. They also
brought disease, along with the discipline problems. Sickness,
however, haunted both sides of the war almost constantly. It has
been estimated that in Quebec in 1759, at least a quarter of
Wolfe’s army was sick with scurvy and dysentery.

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

“A Mild and Tranquil
Government”

In 1744 before the first siege of
Louisbourg, the French had attacked Fort Anne at Annapolis Royal
not once but twice. This was a patriotic effort to restore French
honour by recapturing a landmark of early French coloneization.
Typically, the Acadians living in the vicinity tried to avoid
involvement but from experience they knew they would be punished
for whatever harm befell the British. The British commander Paul
Mascarene, who recognized the Acadians’ neutrality, said of them:
“The inhabitants, though French, have however kept in their
Fidelity much beyond what was expected notwithstanding all the
entreaties of the French officers from Louisbourg who could not
prevail on them to take up arms against us.”

   
It sounds as if there was at least one clear-headed English
military man who could see that the enemy was not necessarily
everyone who spoke the French language. The Acadians themselves,
not fearing to be called traitors by the French, asked simply to be
left out of other people’s quarrels. One resident of Grand Pré had
written to the English to say, “We live under a mild and tranquil
government . . . and have all good reason to be faithful to it. We
hope therefore, that you will have the goodness not to separate us
from it, and that you will grant us the favour not to plunge us
into utter misery.” Unfortunately, he and his fellow citizens would
indeed be plunged “into utter misery” as the years unfolded. That
phrase could not have been more apt.