Canada Under Attack by Jennifer Crump Read Free Book Online

have seemed hopeless even to the most optimistic of the French troops. But de Drucour refused to surrender, knowing that the longer he held out the less likely it was that the British fleet would move on to Quebec. By the end of June the walls of Louisbourg were crumbling and the city had no defences beyond what was left of them. Then, a British bomb exploded in the magazine on board one of the French ships. As the magazine exploded, sparking a horrific fire, the British continued to pound the ship with cannons and the fire spread to two nearby ships. French soldiers and sailors leapt into the sea, exchanging a fiery death for a watery grave.

    The Expedition Against Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, 1745.
    Five days later the British launched a sneak attack at midnight on two of the last remaining French ships, the Prudent and Bienfaisant. They slipped aboard, released the English prisoners held on the ships and then set fire to the ship’s magazines. Once the French realized what was happening they immediately fired back at the English ships. Within hours, the Prudent was in flames and the Bienfaisant had been sunk.
    To those inside the fortress it must have seemed like the British and Americans were everywhere. Their canons dominated the hills around the city, their ships clogged the bay, British soldiers had taken up key positions in trenches along the perimeter of the city, and a steady barrage of canon fire had wreaked havoc on the city. The British lines had moved up so close that their front lines could pick off the French soldiers one by one on the ramparts above the city. One habitant wrote,
    Not a house in the whole place but has felt the force of their cannonade. Between yesterday morning and seven o’clock to-night from a thousand to twelve hundred shells have fallen inside the town, while at least forty cannon have been firing incessantly as well. The surgeons have to run at many a cry of ‘ Ware Shell !’ for fear lest they should share the patients’ fate. 17
    Finally de Drucour agreed to sue for peace. The terms were exceedingly humiliating for the French troops, but without them the safety of the civilians could not be ensured. Drucour had to content himself with the knowledge that he had prevented an attack on Quebec City; it was far too late for the British to continue their attack, at least that year. So the French surrendered and de Drucour was shipped as a prisoner to Britain. Louisbourg was once more in British and American hands. The British continued in their attempts to rid the Atlantic coast of French settlements and in 1759 would use Louisbourg as a launching point for an attack on Quebec. That invasion would be Louisbourg’s last. In the 1760s the fort was razed by British soldiers who did not want to see it returned to the French in any future peace treaty. 18

CHAPTER FOUR:
THE FOURTEENTH COLONY
    While Wolfe’s career ended on the Plains of Abraham, the career of one of his most trusted lieutenants began there. Guy Carleton had been the officer to whom Wolfe entrusted construction of the British batteries. When war once more brewed on the continent, Carleton would be the man who the British government allowed to control defences for Quebec. Other than two tiny islands at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, the French had abandoned the Canadian colonies. But the British and French were no longer the only ones interested in eastern Canada.
    For years the population of the 13 British colonies south of the St. Lawrence had separately brooded over taxation and attempts by the British to limit colonization of the North American west. In the spring of 1775, the brooding exploded into violent confrontation near the towns of Concord and Lexington. Those 13 colonies joined the battle to dislodge their British masters.
    They had once hoped to be 14.
    Quebec was just one of several colonies invited to join the Continental Congress in their fight against British tyranny in 1774, but it