unteers. Three hundred men sailed from Rhode Island, but too late for active service. Of Commodore Warren at Antigua, an express-boat requested the coöperation with such ships as could be spared from the Leeward Islands; but, on a consultation with the captains of his squadron, it was unanimously resolved by them, in the absence of directions from England, not to engage in the scheme.

Thus, then, relying on themselves, the volunteers of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with a merchant, William Pepperell, of Maine, for their chief commander, in April, 1745, met at Canseau. The inventive genius of New England had been aroused; one proposed a model of a flying bridge, to scale the walls even before a breach should be made; another was ready with a caution against mines; a third, who was a minister, presented to the merchant general, ignorant of war, a plan for encamping the army, opening trenches, and placing batteries. The expedition itself was composed of fishermen, who, in time of war, could no longer use the hook and line on the Grand Bank, but, with prudent forethought, took with them their codlines; of mechanics, skilled from childhood in the use of the gun; of lumberers inured to fatigue and encampments in the woods; of husbandmen from the interior, who had grown up with arms in their hands, accustomed to danger, keenest marksmen, disciplined in the pursuit of larger and smaller game; all volunteers; all commanded by officers from among themselves; many of them church-members; almost all having wives and children. As the ice of Cape Breton was drifting in such heaps that a vessel could not enter its harbors, the New England fleet was detained many days at Canseau,—when, on the twenty-third of April, the squadron of Commodore Warren happily arrived. Hardly had his council at Antigua declined the enterprise, when instructions from England bade him render every aid to Massachusetts; and, learning at sea the embarkation of the troops, he sailed directly to Canseau. The

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next day arrived nine vessels from Connecticut, with the forces from that colony, in high spirits and good health.

On the last day of April, an hour after sunrise, the armament, in a hundred vessels of New England, entering the Bay of Chapeaurouge, or Gabarus, as the English called it, came in sight of Louisburg. Its walls, raised on a neck of land on the south side of the harbor, forty feet thick at the base, and from twenty to thirty feet high, all swept from the bastions, surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, were furnished with one hundred and one cannon, seventy-six swivels, and six mortars; its garrison was composed of more than sixteen hundred men; the harbor was defended by an island battery of thirty twentytwo pounders, and by the royal battery on the shore, having thirty large cannon, a moat and bastions, all so perfect that it was thought two hundred men could have defended it against five thousand. On the other hand, the New England forces had but eighteen cannon and three mortars; but no sooner did they come in sight of the city, than, letting down the whale-boats, "they flew to shore, like eagles to the quarry." The French, that came down to prevent the landing, were put to flight, and driven into the woods. On the first day of May, a detachment of four hundred men, led by William Vaughan, a volunteer from New Hampshire, marched. by the city, which it greeted with three cheers, and took post near the north-east harbor. The French who held the royal battery, struck with panic, spiked its guns, and abandoned it in the night. In the morning, boats from the city came to recover it; but Vaughan and thirteen men, standing on the beach, kept them from landing till a reenforcement arrived. To a major in one of the regiments of Massachusetts, Seth Pomroy, from Northampton, a gunsmith, was assigned the oversight of above twenty smiths in drilling the cannon, which were little injured; and the fire from the city and the island battery was soon returned. "Louisburg," wrote Pomroy to his family, "is an exceedingly strong place, and seems impregnable. It looks as if our campaign would last long;

but I am willing to stay till God's time comes to deliver the city into our hands." "Suffer no anxious thought to rest in your mind about me," replied his wife, from the bosom of New England. "The whole town is much engaged with concern for the expedition, how Providence will order the affair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained. I leave you in the hand of God."

The troops made a jest of technical military terms; they laughed at proposals for zigzags and epaulements. The light of nature, however, taught them to erect fascine batteries at the west and south-west of the city. Of these the most effective was commanded by Tidcomb, whose readiness to engage in hazardous enterprises was justly applauded. As it was necessary, for the purposes of attack, to drag the cannon over boggy morasses, impassable for wheels, Meserve, a New Hampshire colonel, who was a carpenter, constructed sledges; and on these the men, with straps over their shoulders, sinking to their knees in mud, drew them safely over. Thus the siege proceeded in a random manner. The men knew little of strict discipline; they had no fixed encampment; destitute of tents to keep off the fogs and dews, their lodgings were turf and brush houses; their bed was the earth -dangerous resting-place for those of the people "unacquainted with lying in the woods." Yet the weather was fair; and the atmosphere, usually thick with palpable fogs, was, during the whole siege, singularly dry. All day long, the men, if not on duty, were busy with amusements, firing at marks, fishing, fowling, wrestling, racing, or running after balls shot from the enemy's guns. The feebleness of the garrison, which had only six hundred regular soldiers, with about a thousand Breton militia, prevented sallies; the hunting-parties, as vigilant for the trail of an enemy as for game, rendered a surprise by land impossible; while the fleet of Admiral Warren guarded the approaches by sea.

Four or five attempts to take the island battery, which commanded the entrance to the harbor, had failed. The

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failure is talked of among the troops; a party of volunteers, after the fashion of Indian expeditions, under a chief of their own election, enlist for a vigorous attack on the night of the twenty-sixth of May; "but now Providence seemed remarkably to frown upon the affair." The assailants are discovered; a murderous fire strikes their boats before they land; only a part of them reach the island; a severe contest for near an hour ensues; those who can reach the boats escape, with the loss of sixty killed, and one hundred and sixteen taken prisoners.

To annoy the island battery, the Americans, under the direction of Gridley of Boston, with persevering toil, erect a battery near the north cape of the harbor, on the Light-House Cliff; while, within two hundred yards of the city, trenches had been thrown up near an advanced post, which, with guns from the royal battery, played upon the north-west gate of Louisburg.

Still no breach had been effected, while the labors of the garrison were making the fortifications stronger than ever. The expedition must be abandoned, or the walls of the city scaled. The naval officers, who had been joined by several ships-of-war, ordered from England on the service, agree to sail into the harbor, and bombard the city, while the land forces are to attempt to enter the fortress by storm. But, strong as were the works, the garrison was discontented, and Duchambon, their commander, ignorant of his duties. The Vigilant, a French ship of sixty-four guns, laden with military stores for his supply, was decoyed by Douglas, of the Mermaid, into the English fleet, and, on the fifteenth of June, after an engagement of some hours, was taken, in sight of the besieged town. The next day the desponding governor sent out a flag of truce; terms of capitulation were accepted; on the seventeenth of June, the city, the fort, the batteries, were surrendered. As the troops, entering the fortress, beheld the strength of the place, their hearts, for the first time, sunk within them. "God has gone out of the way of his common providence," said they,

"in a remarkable and almost miraculous manner, to incline the hearts of the French to give up, and deliver this strong city into our hands." When the news of

success reached Boston, the bells of the town were rung merrily, and all the people were in transports of joy. Thus did the strongest fortress of North America capitulate to an army of undisciplined New England mechanics, and farmers, and fishermen. It was the greatest success achieved by England during the war.

The capture of Louisburg seemed to threaten a transfer of the scene of earnest hostilities to America. France planned its recovery, and the desolation of the English colonies; but, in 1746, the large fleet from France, under the command of the duke d'Anville, wasted by storms and shipwrecks, and pestilential disease, — enfeebled by the sudden death of its commander, and the delirium and suicide of his successor, did not even attack Annapolis. In the next year, the French fleet, with troops destined for Canada and Nova Scotia, was encountered by Anson and Warren; and all its intrepidity could not save it from striking its colors. The American colonies suffered only on the frontier. Fort Massachusetts, in Williamstown, the post nearest to Crown Point, having but twenty-two men for its garrison, capitulated to a large body of French and Indians. In the wars of Queen Anne, Deerfield and Haverhill were the scenes of massacre. It marks the progress of settlements, that danger was now repelled from Concord, on the Merrimac, and from the township now called Charlestown, on the Connecticut.

Repairing to Louisburg, Shirley, with Warren, had concerted a project for reducing all Canada; and the duke of Newcastle replied to their proposals by directing preparations for the conquest. The colonies north of Virginia voted to raise more than eight thousand men; but no fleet arrived from England; and the French were not even driven from their posts in Nova Scotia. The summer of the next year passed in that inactivity which attends the expectation of peace; and