Czytaj książkę: «France and England in N America, Part VII, Vol 1: A Half-Century of Conflict», strona 9

Such measures, if imposed by England, would have roused the most bitter resentment. Even when ordered by their own representatives, they caused a sullen discontent among the colonists, and greatly increased the popular dislike of their military visitors. It was certain that when the expedition sailed and the operation of the new enactments ceased, prices would rise; and hence the compulsion to part with goods at low fixed rates was singularly trying to the commercial temper. It was a busy season, too, with the farmers, and they showed no haste to bring their produce to the camp. Though many of the principal inhabitants bound themselves by mutual agreement to live on their family stores of salt provisions, in order that the troops might be better supplied with fresh, this failed to soothe the irritation of the British officers, aggravated by frequent desertions, which the colonists favored, and by the impossibility of finding pilots familiar with the St. Lawrence. Some when forced into the service made their escape, to the great indignation of Walker, who wrote to the governor: "Her Majesty will resent such actions in a very signal manner; and when it shall be represented that the people live here as if there were no king in Israel, but every one does what seems right in his own eyes, measures will be taken to put things upon a better foot for the future."¹⁶² At length, however, every preparation was made, the supplies were all on board, and after a grand review of the troops on the fields of Noddle's Island, the whole force set sail on the thirtieth of July, the provincials wishing them success, and heartily rejoicing that they were gone.

The fleet consisted of nine ships of war and two bomb-ketches, with about sixty transports, store-ships, hospital-ships, and other vessels, British and provincial. They carried the seven British regiments, numbering, with the artillery train, about fifty-five hundred men, besides six hundred marines and fifteen hundred provincials; counting, with the sailors, nearly twelve thousand in all.¹⁶³

Vetch commanded the provincials, having been brought from Annapolis for that purpose. The great need was of pilots. Every sailor in New England who had seen the St. Lawrence had been pressed into the service, though each and all declared themselves incapable of conducting the fleet to Quebec. Several had no better knowledge of the river than they had picked up when serving as soldiers under Phips twenty-one years before. The best among them was the veteran Captain Bonner, who afterwards amused his old age by making a plan of Boston, greatly prized by connoisseurs in such matters. Vetch had studied the St. Lawrence in his several visits to Quebec, but, like Bonner, he had gone up the river only in sloops or other small craft, and was, moreover, no sailor. One of Walker's ships, the "Chester," sent in advance to cruise in the Gulf, had captured a French vessel commanded by one Paradis, an experienced old voyager, who knew the river well. He took a bribe of five hundred pistoles to act as pilot; but the fleet would perhaps have fared better if he had refused the money. He gave such dismal accounts of the Canadian winter that the Admiral could see nothing but ruin ahead, even if he should safely reach his destination. His tribulation is recorded in his Journal. "That which now chiefly took up my thoughts, was contriving how to secure the ships if we got up to Quebec; for the ice in the river freezing to the bottom would have utterly destroyed and bilged them as much as if they had been squeezed between rocks."¹⁶⁴ These misgivings may serve to give the measure of his professional judgment. Afterwards, reflecting on the situation, he sees cause for gratitude in his own mishaps; "because, had we arrived safe at Quebec, our provisions would have been reduced to a very small proportion, not exceeding eight or nine weeks at short allowance, so that between ten and twelve thousand men must have been left to perish with the extremity of cold and hunger. I must confess the melancholy contemplation of this (had it happened) strikes me with horror; for how dismal must it have been to have beheld the seas and earth locked up by adamantine frosts, and swoln with high mountains of snow, in a barren and uncultivated region; great numbers of brave men famishing with hunger, and drawing lots who should die first to feed the rest."¹⁶⁵

All went well till the eighteenth of August, when there was a strong head-wind, and the ships ran into the Bay of Gaspé. Two days after, the wind shifted to the southeast, and they set sail again, Walker in his flagship, the "Edgar," being at or near the head of the fleet. On the evening of the twenty-second they were at some distance above the great Island of Anticosti. The river is here about seventy miles wide, and no land had been seen since noon of the day before. There was a strong east wind, with fog. Walker thought that he was not far from the south shore, when in fact he was at least fifty miles from it, and more than half that distance north of his true course. At eight in the evening the Admiral signalled the fleet to bring to, under mizzen and main-topsails, with heads turned southward. At half-past ten, Paddon, the captain of the "Edgar," came to tell him that he saw land which he supposed must be the south shore; on which Walker, in a fatal moment, signalled for the ships to wear and bring to, with heads northward. He then turned into his berth, and was falling asleep, when a military officer, Captain Goddard, of Seymour's regiment, hastily entered, and begged him to come on deck, saying that there were breakers on all sides. Walker, scornful of a landsman, and annoyed at being disturbed, answered impatiently and would not stir. Soon after, Goddard appeared again, and implored him for Heaven's sake to come up and see for himself, or all would be lost. At the same time the Admiral heard a great noise and trampling, on which he turned out of his berth, put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and going in this attire on deck, found a scene of fright and confusion. At first he could see nothing, and shouted to the men to reassure them; but just then the fog opened, the moon shone out, and the breaking surf was plainly visible to leeward. The French pilot, who at first could not be found, now appeared on deck, and declared, to the astonishment of both the Admiral and Captain Paddon, that they were off the north shore. Paddon, in his perplexity, had ordered an anchor to be let go; Walker directed the cable to be cut, and, making all sail, succeeded in beating to windward and gaining an offing.¹⁶⁶

The ship that carried Colonel King, of the artillery, had a narrow escape. King says that she anchored in a driving rain, "with a shoal of rocks on each quarter within a cable's length of us, which we plainly perceived by the waves breaking over them in a very violent manner." They were saved by a lull in the gale; for if it had continued with the same violence, he pursues, "our anchors could not have held, and the wind and the vast seas which ran, would have broke our ship into ten thousand pieces against the rocks. All night we heard nothing but ships firing and showing lights, as in the utmost distress."¹⁶⁷

Vetch, who was on board the little frigate "Despatch," says that he was extremely uneasy at the course taken by Walker on the night of the storm. "I told Colonel Dudley and Captain Perkins, commander of the 'Despatch,' that I wondered what the Flag meant by that course, and why he did not steer west and west-by-south."¹⁶⁸ The "Despatch" kept well astern, and so escaped the danger. Vetch heard through the fog guns firing signals of distress; but three days passed before he knew how serious the disaster was. The ships of war had all escaped; but eight British transports, one store-ship, and one sutler's sloop were dashed to pieces.¹⁶⁹ "It was lamentable to hear the shrieks of the sinking, drowning, departing souls," writes the New England commissary, Sheaf, who was very near sharing their fate.

The disaster took place at and near a rocky island, with adjacent reefs, lying off the north shore and called Isle aux Œufs. On the second day after it happened, Walker was told by the master of one of the wrecked transports that eight hundred and eighty-four soldiers had been lost, and he gives this hasty estimate in his published Journal; though he says in his Introduction to it that the total loss of officers, soldiers, and sailors was scarcely nine hundred.¹⁷⁰ According to a later and more trustworthy statement, the loss of the troops was twenty-nine officers, six hundred and seventy-six sergeants, corporals, drummers, and private soldiers, and thirty-five women attached to the regiments; that is, a total of seven hundred and forty lives.¹⁷¹ The loss of the sailors is not given; but it could scarcely have exceeded two hundred.

The fleet spent the next two days in standing to and fro between the northern and southern shores, with the exception of some of the smaller vessels employed in bringing off the survivors from the rocks of Isle aux Œufs. The number thus saved was, according to Walker, four hundred and ninety-nine. On the twenty-fifth he went on board the General's ship, the "Windsor," and Hill and he resolved to call a council of war. In fact, Hill had already got his colonels together. Signals were made for the captains of the men-of-war to join them, and the council began.

"Jack Hill," the man about town, placed in high command by the influence of his sister, the Queen's tire-woman, had now an opportunity to justify his appointment and prove his mettle. Many a man of pleasure and fashion, when put to the proof, has revealed the latent hero within him; but Hill was not one of them. Both he and Walker seemed to look for nothing but a pretext for retreat; and when manhood is conspicuously wanting in the leaders, a council of war is rarely disposed to supply it. The pilots were called in and examined, and they all declared themselves imperfectly acquainted with the St. Lawrence, which, as some of the captains observed, they had done from the first. Sir William Phips, with pilots still more ignorant, had safely carried his fleet to Quebec in 1690, as Walker must have known, for he had with him Phips's Journal of the voyage. The expedition had lost about a twelfth part of its soldiers and sailors, besides the transports that carried them; with this exception there was no reason for retreat which might not as well have been put forward when the fleet left Boston. All the war-ships were safe, and the loss of men was not greater than might have happened in a single battle. Hill says that Vetch, when asked if he would pilot the fleet to Quebec, refused to undertake it;¹⁷² but Vetch himself gives his answer as follows: "I told him [the Admiral] I never was bred to sea, nor was it any part of my province; but I would do my best by going ahead and showing them where the difficulty of the river was, which I knew pretty well."¹⁷³ The naval captains, however, resolved that by reason of the ignorance of the pilots and the dangerous currents it was impossible to go up to Quebec.¹⁷⁴ So discreditable a backing out from a great enterprise will hardly be found elsewhere in English annals. On the next day Vetch, disappointed and indignant, gave his mind freely to the Admiral. "The late disaster cannot, in my humble opinion, be anyways imputed to the difficulty of the navigation, but to the wrong course we steered, which most unavoidably carried us upon the north shore. Who directed that course you best know; and as our return without any further attempt would be a vast reflection upon the conduct of this affair, so it would be of very fatal consequence to the interest of the Crown and all the British colonies upon this continent."¹⁷⁵ His protest was fruitless. The fleet retraced its course to the gulf, and then steered for Spanish River,—now the harbor of Sydney,—in the Island of Cape Breton; the Admiral consoling himself with the reflection that the wreck was a blessing in disguise and a merciful intervention of Providence to save the expedition from the freezing, starvation, and cannibalism which his imagination had conjured up.¹⁷⁶

The frigate "Sapphire" was sent to Boston with news of the wreck and the retreat, which was at once despatched to Nicholson, who, if he continued his movement on Montreal, would now be left to conquer Canada alone. His force consisted of about twenty-three hundred men, white and red, and when the fatal news reached him he was encamped on Wood Creek, ready to pass Lake Champlain. Captain Butler, a New York officer at the camp, afterwards told Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, that when Nicholson heard what had happened, he was beside himself with rage, tore off his wig, threw it on the ground and stamped upon it, crying out, "Roguery! Treachery!"¹⁷⁷ When his fit was over, he did all that was now left for him to do,—burned the wooden forts he had built, marched back to Albany, and disbanded his army, after leaving one hundred and fifty men to protect the frontier against scalping-parties.¹⁷⁸

Canada had been warned of the storm gathering against her. Early in August, Vaudreuil received letters from Costebelle, at Placentia, telling him that English prisoners had reported mighty preparations at Boston against Quebec, and that Montreal was also to be attacked.¹⁷⁹ The colony was ill prepared for the emergency, but no effort was spared to give the enemy a warm reception. The militia were mustered, Indians called together, troops held in readiness, and defences strengthened. The saints were invoked, and the aid of Heaven was implored by masses, processions, and penances, as in New England by a dismal succession of fasts. Mother Juchereau de Saint-Denis tells us how devout Canadians prayed for help from God and the most holy Virgin; "since their glory was involved, seeing that the true religion would quickly perish if the English should prevail." The general alarm produced effects which, though transient, were thought highly commendable while they lasted. The ladies, according to Mother Juchereau, gave up their ornaments, and became more modest and more pious. "Those of Montreal," pursues the worthy nun, "even outdid those of Quebec; for they bound themselves by oath to wear neither ribbons nor lace, to keep their throats covered, and to observe various holy practices for the space of a year." The recluse of Montreal, Mademoiselle Le Ber, who, by reason of her morbid seclusion and ascetic life, was accounted almost a saint, made a flag embroidered with a prayer to the Virgin, to be borne against the heretical bands of Nicholson.

When that commander withdrew, his retreat, though not the cause of it, was quickly known at Montreal, and the forces gathered there went down to Quebec to aid in repelling the more formidable attack by sea. Here all was suspense and expectancy till the middle of October, when the report came that two large ships had been seen in the river below. There was great excitement, for they were supposed to be the van of the British fleet; but alarm was soon turned to joy by the arrival of the ships, which proved to be French. On the nineteenth, the Sieur de la Valterie, who had come from Labrador in September, and had been sent down the river again by Vaudreuil to watch for the English fleet, appeared at Quebec with tidings of joy. He had descended the St. Lawrence in a canoe, with two Frenchmen and an Indian, till, landing at Isle aux Œufs on the first of October, they met two French sailors or fishermen loaded with plunder, and presently discovered the wrecks of seven English ships, with, as they declared, fifteen or sixteen hundred dead bodies on the strand hard by, besides dead horses, sheep, dogs, and hens, three or four hundred large iron-hooped casks, a barrel of wine and a barrel and a keg of brandy, cables, anchors, chains, planks, boards, shovels, picks, mattocks, and piles of old iron three feet high.¹⁸⁰

"The least devout," writes Mother Juchereau, "were touched by the grandeur of the miracle wrought in our behalf,—a marvellous effect of God's love for Canada, which, of all these countries, is the only one that professes the true religion."

Quebec was not ungrateful. A solemn mass was ordered every month during a year, to be followed by the song of Moses after the destruction of Pharaoh and his host.¹⁸¹ Amazing reports were spread concerning the losses of the English. About three thousand of "these wretches"—so the story ran—died after reaching land, without counting the multitudes drowned in the attempt; and even this did not satisfy divine justice, for God blew up one of the ships by lightning during the storm. Vessels were sent to gather up the spoils of the wreck, and they came back, it was reported, laden with marvellous treasures, including rich clothing, magnificent saddles, plate, silver-hilted swords, and the like; bringing also the gratifying announcement that though the autumn tides had swept away many corpses, more than two thousand still lay on the rocks, naked and in attitudes of despair.¹⁸² These stories, repeated by later writers, find believers to this day.¹⁸³

When Walker and his ships reached Spanish River, he called another council of war. The question was whether, having failed to take Quebec, they should try to take Placentia; and it was resolved that the short supply of provisions, the impossibility of getting more from Boston before the first of November, and the risks of the autumnal storms, made the attempt impracticable. Accordingly, the New England transports sailed homeward, and the British fleet steered for the Thames.

Swift writes on the sixth of October in his Journal to Stella: "The news of Mr. Hill's miscarriage in his expedition came to-day, and I went to visit Mrs. Masham and Mrs. Hill, his two sisters, to condole with them." A week after, he mentions the arrival of the general himself; and again on the sixteenth writes thus: "I was to see Jack Hill this morning, who made that unfortunate expedition; and there is still more misfortune, for that ship which was admiral of his fleet [the "Edgar"] is blown up in the Thames by an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going, as they think, to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men are lost."

A report of this crowning disaster reached Quebec, and Mother Juchereau does not fail to improve it. According to her, the Admiral, stricken with divine justice, and wrought to desperation, blew up the ship himself, and perished with all on board, except only two men.

There was talk of an examination into the causes of the failure, but nothing was done. Hill, strong in the influence of Mrs. Masham, reaped new honors and offices. Walker, more answerable for the result, and less fortunate in court influence, was removed from command, and his name was stricken from the half-pay list. He did not, however, blow himself up, but left England and emigrated to South Carolina, whence, thinking himself ill-treated by the authorities, he removed to Barbadoes, and died some years later.¹⁸⁴

CHAPTER IX

1712-1749

LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA

Peace of Utrecht.—Perilous Questions.—Louisbourg founded.—Annapolis attacked.—Position of the Acadians.—Weakness of the British Garrison.—Apathy of the Ministry.—French Intrigue.—Clerical Politicians.—The Oath of Allegiance.—Acadians refuse it: their Expulsion proposed; they take the Oath.

The great European war was drawing to an end, and with it the American war, which was but its echo. An avalanche of defeat and disaster had fallen upon the old age of Louis XIV., and France was burdened with an insupportable load of debt. The political changes in England came to her relief. Fifty years later, when the elder Pitt went out of office and Bute came in, France had cause to be grateful; for the peace of 1763 was far more favorable to her than it would have been under the imperious war minister. It was the same in 1712. The Whigs who had fallen from power would have wrung every advantage from France; the triumphant Tories were eager to close with her on any terms not so easy as to excite popular indignation. The result was the Treaty of Utrecht, which satisfied none of the allies of England, and gave to France conditions more favorable than she had herself proposed two years before. The fall of Godolphin and the disgrace of Marlborough were a godsend to her.

Yet in America Louis XIV. made important concessions. The Five Nations of the Iroquois were acknowledged to be British subjects; and this became in future the preposterous foundation for vast territorial claims of England. Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia, "according to its ancient limits," were also given over by France to her successful rival; though the King parted from Acadia with a reluctance shown by the great offers he made for permission to retain it.¹⁸⁵

But while the Treaty of Utrecht seemed to yield so much, and yielded so much in fact, it staved off the settlement of questions absolutely necessary for future peace. The limits of Acadia, the boundary line between Canada and the British colonies, and the boundary between those colonies and the great western wilderness claimed by France, were all left unsettled, since the attempt to settle them would have rekindled the war. The peace left the embers of war still smouldering, sure, when the time should come, to burst into flame. The next thirty years were years of chronic, smothered war, disguised, but never quite at rest. The standing subjects of dispute were three, very different in importance. First, the question of Acadia: whether the treaty gave England a vast country, or only a strip of seacoast. Next, that of northern New England and the Abenaki Indians, many of whom French policy still left within the borders of Maine, and whom both powers claimed as subjects or allies. Last and greatest was the question whether France or England should hold the valleys of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and with them the virtual control of the continent. This was the triple problem that tormented the northern English colonies for more than a generation, till it found a solution at last in the Seven Years' War.

Louis XIV. had deeply at heart the recovery of Acadia. Yet the old and infirm King, whose sun was setting in clouds after half a century of unrivalled splendor, felt that peace was a controlling necessity, and he wrote as follows to his plenipotentiaries at Utrecht: "It is so important to prevent the breaking off of the negotiations that the King will give up both Acadia and Cape Breton, if necessary for peace; but the plenipotentiaries will yield this point only in the last extremity, for by this double cession Canada will become useless, the access to it will be closed, the fisheries will come to an end, and the French marine be utterly destroyed."¹⁸⁶ And he adds that if the English will restore Acadia, he, the King, will give them, not only St. Christopher, but also the islands of St. Martin and St. Bartholomew.

The plenipotentiaries replied that the offer was refused, and that the best they could do without endangering the peace was to bargain that Cape Breton should belong to France.¹⁸⁷ On this, the King bid higher still for the coveted province, and promised that if Acadia were returned to him, the fortifications of Placentia should be given up untouched, the cannon in the forts of Hudson Bay abandoned to the English, and the Newfoundland fisheries debarred to Frenchmen,¹⁸⁸—a remarkable concession; for France had fished on the banks of Newfoundland for two centuries, and they were invaluable to her as a nursery of sailors. Even these offers were rejected, and England would not resign Acadia.

Cape Breton was left to the French. This large island, henceforth called by its owners Isle Royale, lies east of Acadia, and is separated from it only by the narrow Strait of Canseau. From its position, it commands the chief entrance of the gulf and river of St. Lawrence. Some years before, the intendant Raudot had sent to the court an able paper, in which he urged its occupation and settlement, chiefly on commercial and industrial grounds. The war was then at its height; the plan was not carried into effect, and Isle Royale was still a wilderness. It was now proposed to occupy it for military and political reasons. One of its many harbors, well fortified and garrisoned, would guard the approaches of Canada, and in the next war furnish a base for attacking New England and recovering Acadia.

After some hesitation the harbor called Port à l'Anglois was chosen for the proposed establishment, to which the name of Louisbourg was given, in honor of the King. It lies near the southeastern point of the island, where an opening in the ironbound coast, at once easily accessible and easily defended, gives entrance to a deep and sheltered basin, where a fleet of war-ships may find good anchorage. The proposed fortress was to be placed on the tongue of land that lies between this basin and the sea. The place, well chosen from the point of view of the soldier or the fisherman, was unfit for an agricultural colony, its surroundings being barren hills studded with spruce and fir, and broad marshes buried in moss.

In spite of the losses and humiliations of the war, great expectations were formed from the new scheme. Several years earlier, when the proposals of Raudot were before the Marine Council, it was confidently declared that a strong fortress on Cape Breton would make the King master of North America. The details of the establishment were settled in advance. The King was to build the fortifications, supply them with cannon, send out eight companies of soldiers, besides all the usual officers of government, establish a well-endowed hospital, conducted by nuns, as at Quebec, provide Jesuits and Récollets as chaplains, besides Filles de la Congrégation to teach girls, send families to the spot, support them for two years, and furnish a good number of young women to marry the soldiers.¹⁸⁹

This plan, or something much like it, was carried into effect. Louisbourg was purely and solely the offspring of the Crown and its ally, the Church. In time it grew into a compact fishing town of about four thousand inhabitants, with a strong garrison and a circuit of formidable ramparts and batteries. It became by far the strongest fortress on the Atlantic coast, and so famous as a resort of privateers that it was known as the Dunquerque of America.

What concerns us now is its weak and troubled infancy. It was to be peopled in good part from the two lost provinces of Acadia and Newfoundland, whose inhabitants were to be transported to Louisbourg or other parts of Isle Royale, which would thus be made at once and at the least possible cost a dangerous neighbor to the newly acquired possessions of England. The Micmacs of Acadia, and even some of the Abenakis, were to be included in this scheme of immigration.

In the autumn, the commandant of Plaisance, or Placentia,—the French stronghold in Newfoundland,—received the following mandate from the King:—

Monsieur de Costebelle,—I have caused my orders to be given you to evacuate the town and forts of Plaisance and the other places of your government of Newfoundland, ceded to my dear sister the Queen of Great Britain. I have given my orders for the equipment of the vessels necessary to make the evacuation and transport you, with the officers, garrison, and inhabitants of Plaisance and other places of Newfoundland, to my Isle Royale, vulgarly called Cape Breton; but as the season is so far advanced that this cannot be done without exposing my troops and my subjects to perishing from cold and misery, and placing my vessels in evident peril of wreck, I have judged it proper to defer the transportation till the next spring.¹⁹⁰

The inhabitants of Placentia consisted only of twenty-five or thirty poor fishermen, with their families,¹⁹¹ and some of them would gladly have become English subjects and stayed where they were; but no choice was given them. "Nothing," writes Costebelle, "can cure them of the error, to which they obstinately cling, that they are free to stay or go, as best suits their interest."¹⁹² They and their fishing-boats were in due time transported to Isle Royale, where for a while their sufferings were extreme.

Attempts were made to induce the Indians of Acadia to move to the new colony; but they refused, and to compel them was out of the question. But by far the most desirable accession to the establishment of Isle Royale would be that of the Acadian French, who were too numerous to be transported in the summary manner practised in the case of the fishermen of Placentia. It was necessary to persuade rather than compel them to migrate, and to this end great reliance was placed on their priests, especially Fathers Pain and Dominique. Ponchartrain himself wrote to the former on the subject. The priest declares that he read the letter to his flock, who answered that they wished to stay in Acadia; and he adds that the other Acadians were of the same mind, being unwilling to leave their rich farms and risk starvation on a wild and barren island.¹⁹³ "Nevertheless," he concludes, "we shall fulfil the intentions of his Majesty by often holding before their eyes that religion for which they ought to make every sacrifice." He and his brother priests kept their word. Freedom of worship was pledged on certain conditions to the Acadians by the Treaty of Utrecht, and no attempt was ever made to deprive them of it; yet the continual declaration of their missionaries that their souls were in danger under English rule was the strongest spur to impel them to migrate.

The condition of the English in Acadia since it fell into their hands had been a critical one. Port Royal, thenceforth called Annapolis Royal, or simply Annapolis, had been left, as before mentioned, in charge of Colonel Vetch, with a heterogeneous garrison of four hundred and fifty men.¹⁹⁴ The Acadians of the banlieue—a term defined as covering a space of three miles round the fort—had been included in the capitulation, and had taken an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, binding so long as they remained in the province. Some of them worked, for the garrison and helped to repair the fort, which was in a ruinous condition. Meanwhile the Micmac Indians remained fiercely hostile to the English; and in June, 1711, aided by a band of Penobscots, they ambuscaded and killed or captured nearly seventy of them. This completely changed the attitude of the Acadians. They broke their oath, rose against their new masters, and with their Indian friends, invested the fort to the number of five or six hundred. Disease, desertion, and the ambuscade had reduced the garrison to about two hundred effective men, and the defences of the place were still in bad condition.¹⁹⁵ The assailants, on the other hand, had no better leader than the priest, Gaulin, missionary of the Micmacs and prime mover in the rising. He presently sailed for Placentia to beg for munitions and a commander; but his errand failed, the siege came to nought, and the besiegers dispersed. Vaudreuil, from whom the Acadians had begged help, was about to send it when news of the approach of Walker's fleet forced him to keep all his strength for his own defence.