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Tantramar! Tantramar!

Until that sorrow fades afar,

Thy plains where birds and blossoms are

Laugh not their ancient way!

—Charles G. D. Roberts

A FEW lonely square miles of hill and marsh in the narrow borderland of the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick of today were the theatre of important events at the middle of the eighteenth century. Two rival forts, Beauséjour of the French, and Lawrence of the English, faced each other on hilltops three miles apart, and their warfare did not cease until the Isthmus of Chignecto fell to the English, in 1755, in the encircling movement for the possession of a continent.

Halifax had been founded by the English to meet the challenge of a stronger Louisbourg. Acadians in the narrowing territory to the north were restless and threatening as their passions were lashed by the Abbé le Loutre, the priest whose fomenting of hatred of the English led in the end to the unhappy exiling of his own race. Major Charles Lawrence landed at Beaubassin (now Amherst) in April, 1750, but meeting resistance he returned in September with a larger force and prepared to fortify. From this grew the palisaded Fort Lawrence, and on a nearby hill, adjacent to the marshes of Tantramar, with their red tidal rivers, there rose, in the rivalry of the French, Fort Beauséjour, with five bastions, barracks, bomb-proofs and twenty-four cannon.

For four years the opposing forts growled at each other from their hilltops. Skirmishes and raids, attacks and reprisals, went on under the inspiration of the opposing commanders. Le Loutre and Vergor forced their Acadian dependents to labour at dike-building, and the powerful Beauséjour became second only to Louisbourg in the ambitions of the French. The colour and life of the forts by the marshes, which have been preserved in the stories of Charles G. D. Roberts, Marshall Saunders and other Canadians, are among the most dramatic episodes in the country’s military record.

The French were weakened by the official corruption which was fast hastening the nation to disaster, while Paris laughed at the wit of fashionable black-legs. The Intendant Bigot, chief vampire in New France, wrote Vergor, his creature, who was commandant at Beauséjour:

“Make the most of your position, my dear Vergor; shear and pare to your heart’s content, so as to join me in France and buy yourself a mansion near me.”

British preparations against France in the New World were now advancing speedily, and an expedition against Beauséjour was organized by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts. An army of two thousand left Boston on May 22, 1755, and in a few days anchored within five miles of the Fort. Vergor was greatly alarmed, and asked Louisbourg for help, which was refused, for the good reason that the British had Louisbourg under blockade. By threats Vergor strengthened his garrison of 160 regulars by 300 Acadians from the ranks of the farmers who had sought shelter under his guns when official corruption had frustrated their hopes of diked farms and independence.

Colonel Robert Monckton landed his attacking force and camped around Fort Lawrence. On June 4 he crossed the Missaguash and approached Beauséjour. As cannon fire grew intense, Abbé le Loutre, with pipe in his mouth and as energetic as ever, directed the defenders in his shirt-sleeves. At last, after only a few days’ fighting, a shell dropped through a “bomb-proof” of the fort, killing six, within sight of the French leaders. In desperate alarm, the defenders sent up a white flag.

The French marched out on June 16 with the honours of war and were sent to Louisbourg. Le Loutre escaped to Quebec, but was caught and spent eight years in an English prison. Fort Gaspereau, across the isthmus on Bay Verte, a station for supplies from Louisbourg, also surrendered. Beauséjour was occupied by the English and renamed Fort Cumberland, after a son of George II who had won Culloden, crushing the army but not the spirit of the Highlanders.

One joy remained for the old fort. Here on an April morning in 1759 Captain John Knox received the call from Wolfe at Louisbourg to join in the attack on Quebec. The guns saluted and the soldiers cheered as they departed.

Ruins of Fort Beauséjour