A Counterfeiter's Paradise by Ben Tarnoff Read Free Book Online Page B

disappear in the months after they took Louisbourg; if anything, it worsened. Tensions between the American colonials and the British regulars, pervasive before, now threatened to erupt into outright revolt. The royal troops hoarded the plunder for themselves, enraging the Americans, many of whom had signed on to the expedition exclusively for the spoils. Bad housing and poor sanitation, combined with Louisbourg’s damp climate and brutal winters, produced epidemics among the soldiers; by the summer of 1746, an estimated twelve hundred soldiers had died of sickness. The expedition’s commander in chief, William Pepperrell, increased the rum ration to tamp down discontent, and the men drank heavily to numb themselves to the cold and forget their frustrations. The Louisbourg that Sullivan saw didn’t look like the thriving Atlantic seaport that had been so prized by New France and so coveted by New England. It was a foggy, isolated outpost that held within its walls a volatile mix of mutinous Americans, supercilious redcoats, and defeated, demoralized French.
    During the two years Sullivan spent there, he honed his metalworking skills, got married, and became a drunk. Nothing is known about his wife other than the unflattering description he provides in his confession, and after their loud fight in Boston, they seem to have permanently parted ways. “I unhappily Married a Wife, which proved a Torment to me, and made my Life uncomfortable,” Sullivan says, “and she was given to take a Cup too much, and I for my Part took to the same.” His drinking tookits toll on his work in Louisbourg, and his behavior worsened to such a degree that his superiors demoted him. Provoked by his wife’s “aggravating Tongue,” Sullivan squandered his privileged position as an armorer and had to serve out the rest of his time as a common soldier.
    Fortunately for Sullivan, Louisbourg didn’t remain in British hands much longer. On October 18, 1748, after months of preliminaries, delegates from the major European powers met in Aix-la-Chapelle to end the war that had begun eight years earlier with Charles VI’s deadly dish of mushrooms. They agreed to restore the map to the prewar boundaries, which meant among other things that England had to return Louisbourg to France. When news of the treaty’s terms reached New England’s shores in early 1749, people were livid. After mounting a successful siege against almost impossible odds, after enduring the frigid Louisbourg winter, a savage epidemic, and the condescension of British officers, the Americans now had to pick up and leave the fortress they fought so hard to capture. Partly in the hopes of calming the Americans’ anger, Parliament agreed to reimburse the New England colonies for their role in the expedition, and Massachusetts was slated to receive the lion’s share: more than £183,000, mostly in silver. Thomas Hutchinson planned to devote the sum entirely to retiring the colony’s paper money by exchanging everyone’s notes for coin, thereby putting enough silver into circulation to end Massachusetts’s dependence on bills of credit.
    While the windfall delighted hard-money advocates like Hutchinson, who saw Louisbourg as a long-awaited opportunity to finish off the specter of paper currency, it was the final insult for the men who actually went to war—farmers and laborers who relied on paper to trade goods and pay taxes. If any of the soldiers at Louisbourg had a twisted-enough sense of humor, it would have made a good joke: England’s payment for the war, rather than being used to reward the men who fought it, would eventually deprive them of the currency they needed in their everyday lives. The incensed militiamen stationed at Louisbourg took a souvenir with themback to Massachusetts, a last bit of booty to commemorate their voided victory: the wrought-iron cross adorned with fleurs-de-lis that stood in the citadel’s Catholic chapel. The cross remained in