The Taking of Louisburg 1745

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Drake Samuel Adams. The Taking of Louisburg 1745

I. COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES

II. LOUISBURG REVISITED

III. LOUISBURG TO SOLVE IMPORTANT POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS

IV. RÉSUMÉ OF EVENTS TO THE DECLARATION OF WAR

V “LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN”

VI. THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL

VII. THE ARMY AT CANSO

VIII. THE SIEGE

IX. THE SIEGE CONTINUED

X. AFTERTHOUGHTS

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The annals of a celebrated fortress are sure to present some very curious and instructive phases of national policy and character. Of none of the fortresses of colonial America can this be said with greater truth than of Louisburg, once the key and stronghold of French power in Canada.

No historic survey can be called complete which does not include the scene itself. Nowhere does the reality of history come home to us with such force, or leave such deep, abiding impressions, as when we stand upon ground where some great action has been performed, or reach a spot hallowed by the golden memories of the past. It gives tone, color, consistency to the story as nothing else can, and, for the time being, we almost persuade ourselves that we, too, are actors in the great drama itself.

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Upon looking about him, one sees the marked feature of all this region in the chain of low hills rising behind Louisburg. But a little back from the coast the hills rise higher, are drawn more compactly together, and assume the semi-mountainous character common to the whole island.

As this chain of hills undulates along the coast here, sometimes bending a little back from it, or again inclining out toward it, one of its zigzags approaches within a mile of Louisburg. At this point, several low, lumpy ridges push off for the seashore, through long reaches of boggy moorland, now and then disappearing beneath a shallow pond or stagnant pool, which lies glistening among the hollows between. Where it is uneven the land is stony and unfertile; where level, it is a bog. This rendered the land side as unfavorable to a besieging force as the nest of outlying rocks and reefs did the sea approaches. A continued rainfall must have made it wholly untenable for troops.

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