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. Thus the siege proceeded in a random manner. The men knew little of strict discipline; they had no fixed encampment; their lodgings were turf and brush houses; their bed was the earth, dangerous restingplace 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 time 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 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 by 1746. night; "but now Providence seemed remarkably May 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, erected a battery near the north cape of the harbor, on the Light-house Cliff; and 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.

1745.

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, agreed to sail into the harbor and bombard the city, while the land forces were to attempt to enter it 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, had been decoyed by Douglas, of the "Mermaid," into the English fleet, May 18. and, after an engagement of some hours, had been taken in sight of the besieged town. 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; and a New England minister soon preached in the French chapel. As the troops, marching into the place, beheld its strength, 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 July 3. people were in transports of joy. The strongest fortress of North America capitulated 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 threatened a transfer of the scene of earnest hostilities to America. France

1746

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

1747.

post nearest to Crown Point, having but twenty-two Aug. 20. men for its garrison, capitulated to a large body of

1746.

French and Indians. In the wars of Queen Anne, Deerfield and Haverhill were the scenes of massacre.

1747. April.

It

marks the progress of settlements that danger was repelled from Concord on the Merrimack, 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 1746. 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 in September the provincial army, by direction of the Duke of Newcastle, was disbanded. "There is reason enough for doubting whether the king, if he had the power, would wish to drive the French from their possessions in

1747.

1748. Nov.

Canada." Such was public opinion at New York, in 1748, as preserved for us by the Swedish traveller, Peter Kalm. "The English colonies in this part of the world," he continues, "have increased so much in wealth and population that they will vie with European England. But, to maintain the commerce and the power of the metropolis, they are forbid to establish new manufac

tures which might compete with the English; they may dig for gold and silver only on condition of shipping them immediately to England; they have, with the exception of a few fixed places, no liberty to trade to any parts not belonging to the English dominions; and foreigners are not allowed the least commerce with these American colonies. And there are many similar restrictions. These oppressions have made the inhabitants of the English colonies less tender towards their mother land. This coldness is increased by the many foreigners who are settled among them; for Dutch, Germans, and French are here blended with English, and have no special love for Old England. Besides, some people are always discontented, and love change; and exceeding freedom and prosperity nurse an untamable spirit. I have been told, not only by native Americans, but by English emigrants, publicly, that within thirty or fifty years the English colonies in North America may constitute a separate state, entirely independent of England. But, as this whole country is towards the sea unguarded, and on the frontier is kept uneasy by the French, these dangerous neighbors are the reason why the love of these colonies for their metropolis does not utterly decline. The English government has therefore reason to regard the French in North America as the chief power that urges their colonies to submission."

The Swede heard but the truth, though that truth lay concealed from British statesmen. Even during the war, the spirit of resistance to tyranny was kindled into a fury at Boston. Sir Charles Knowles, the British naval commander, whom Smollett is thought to have described justly as "an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity," having been deserted by some of his crew, while lying off Nantasket, early one morning, sent Nov. 17. his boats up to Boston, and impressed seamen from vessels, mechanics and laborers from the wharfs. "Such a surprise could not be borne here," wrote Hutchinson, who was present; and he assigns, as the reason of impatience, that "the people had not been used to it." "Men would not be contented with fair promises from the gov

1747.

ernor;" "the seizure and restraint of the commanders and other officers who were in town was insisted upon, as the only effectual method to procure the release of the inhabitants aboard the ships." And the mob executed what the governor declined. At last, after three days of rage and resentment, through the mediation of the house of representatives, order was restored. The officers were liberated from their irregular imprisonment; and, in return, most, if not all, of the impressed citizens of Boston were dismissed from the English fleet.

1748.

The alliance of Austria with Russia hastened negotiations for the pacification of Europe; and a congress convened at Aix-la-Chapelle, to restore tranquillity to the civilized world. Between England and Spain, and between France and England, after eight years of reciprocal annoyance, after an immense accumulation of national debt, the condition of peace was a return to the state before the war. Nothing was gained. Humanity had suffered, without a purpose and without a result. In the colonial world, Madras was restored for Cape Breton; the boundaries between the British and the French provinces in America were left unsettled, neither party acknowledging the right of the other to the basin of the Penobscot or of the Ohio; the frontier of Florida was not traced. Neither did Spain relinquish the right of searching English vessels suspected of smuggling; and, though it was agreed that the assiento treaty should continue for four years more, the right was soon abandoned, under a new convention, for an inconsiderable pecuniary indemnity. The principle of the freedom of the seas was asserted only by Frederic II. Holland, remaining neutral as long as possible, claimed, under the treaty of 1674, freedom of goods for her free ships; but England, disregarding the treaty, captured and condemned her vessels. On occasion of the war between Sweden and Russia, the principle was again urged by the Dutch, and likewise rejected by the Swedes. Even Prussian ships were seized; but the king of Prussia indemnified the sufferers by reprisals on English property. Of higher questions, in which the interests of civilization were involved, not one was adjusted.