1748-9] French and British claims 119 Indian-haunted wilderness, known only to a few hundred traders, hunters, and voyageurs of both British and French nationality. The British provinces vaguely claimed everything that lay to the westward within their respective parallels. The French, on the strength of La Salle's early discoveries, claimed with equal vagueness the entire basin of the Mississippi, whose head-waters extended to Lake Erie. In other words, the English denied the right of the French to cross the Canadian lakes, while the French, on their part, desired to confine the English to the strip of country which they then occupied between the Alleghanies and the sea. But the French were preparing to put their theories into practice, and to secure the whole fur-trade of Western America. De la Gallissonière hoped to plant French settlements in the Ohio valley as they had been planted in Canada. He intended that forts should be built and garrisoned, and that a firm alliance should be made with the Indian tribes on the strength of their instinctive dread of the English cultivator. Thus Canada and Louisiana would be linked together by a chain of forts and a combination of military force that would certainly intimidate any land hunters or traders from the Atlantic colonies, at any rate till emigration from France should give substance to the settlements and add strength to the barrier which was designed to shut out the Anglo-Saxon from the West. Nor was it territorial greed only that prompted this ambitious scheme. It was felt that if the growing power of England in America remained unchecked it would so stimulate her prosperity as to make her a menace to France in every part of the world. In 1749 De la Gallissonière made the first move in the game by sending his notable expedition of two hundred persons under De Céleron into the heart of the Ohio wilderness. Here at certain spots they buried leaden plates on which the French monarch's claim to the country was inscribed. At others they nailed shields bearing the arms of France upon the trees. Much rhetoric was expended on Indian audiences with the object of convincing them that Louis XV, not George II, was their father. British traders found in the Indian settlements were summarily expelled and letters written to the British authorities professing surprise that British subjects should be found poaching on French territory. The French were beyond a doubt less distasteful to the Indians than their rivals. They had more natural genius for winning the affection of the natives, and had no desire to settle their lands to the detriment of the game. On the other hand the French traders could not compete with the English in the matter of good wares and low prices a very serious consideration and another urgent reason for checking if possible the British advance. De la Jonquière and Duquesne, who succeeded De la Gallissonière in the government of Canada, continued his policy. The harassed English traders went eastward with their grievances, while the communication of the formal and reiterated claims of the Canadian - 120 Collision in the West [1749governors to those of Pennsylvania and Virginia showed that the backwoodsmen were no self-interested alarmists. The temper of the colonies chiefly concerned remained, however, wholly apathetic to a danger they scarcely realised. The question was beyond the limited vision of the average colonist, the scene of these forward movements too remote, the movements themselves were too insignificant. Having regard to the self-absorbed isolation that distinguished the nature of his life for the most part, one can hardly be surprised at his apathy. He could not easily divine what by the light of history seems to us now so clear, that the momentous question whether France or England was to dominate North America was on the eve of settlement. Happily there were some far-sighted men upon the spot who rose superior to colonial indifference, and thus while divining the future supported their views with energetic action. Conspicuous among these was Dinwiddie, deputy governor of Virginia. In 1753 he despatched George Washington, then a capable, promising youth of twenty-two, to warn off the French in their turn as interlopers. With the co-operation of some of his fellow-governors he followed up this futile formality by a strong appeal to the English ministry to have regard to the gravity of the situation. The answer was a permission to repel force by force, but it was accompanied by no promise of assistance. A small sum, however, was wrung from the reluctant and half-sceptical legislators of Virginia, and a handful of provincial troops was sent to construct a fort at the forks of the Ohio river - a spot soon to become one of famous and ensanguined memory and now buried among the roaring furnaces of Pittsburg. This was but a challenge. The French, pouring southward in small bodies through the shaggy forests that clothed this whole country, soon succeeded in driving these rustic sappers back. In the following summer the English retaliated with a provincial force of some four hundred men led by Washington. A brisk skirmish of vanguards, in which the French were captured and their leader killed, made a stir throughout North America and caused much talk in Europe. Soon afterwards Washington and his rough levies, after fighting behind entrenchments for the whole of a rainy July day against overwhelming numbers, surrendered on favourable terms at the Great Meadows and were permitted to return to Virginia. - This was in 1754. The two nations were nominally still at peace and were to maintain for some time the curious fiction. The voice of Dinwiddie, however, and the rifle-practice of the French at the Great Meadows had not fallen on deaf ears in England, and preparations were made for more serious movements. Meanwhile it will be well to say a few words about an American province of England that lay, physically and politically, outside the old colonial group, but which was to play no insignificant part in the coming war. Nova Scotia, then more often called Acadia, thrusting its rugged coast line far out into the Atlantic between Canada. and the New England colonies, was of vastly more importance than its -1754] French intrigues in Acadia 121 territorial value and its thin population would suggest. Upon that northern fragment of the province known as Cape Breton Island, the embattled town and great fortress of Louisbourg, restored to France in 1748, frowned over the misty seas. In the ample harbour, beneath its formidable batteries of big cannon, navies could ride securely at anchor, and from such a base could effectually dominate these northern waters. For forty years the Acadians, made famous by Longfellow's pathetic but sadly misleading hexameters, had been British subjects. They had been governed with a leniency so remarkable as to be the despair of the Canadian authorities, lay and clerical, whose interest it was for many urgent reasons to spread discontent among them. The oath of allegiance, indispensable to the good government of alien subjects, had been most tenderly administered. Their religion and their priesthood received full recognition, their lands remained untaxed. The habitants themselves, simple, ignorant, and superstitious, were incapable of sacrificing their lands and possessions for any abstract ideas of loyalty to a distant and shadowy monarch. All they asked was to be left unmolested in their village life and peaceful agriculture. But this placid acquiescence did not suit their old masters the French, who hoped some day to recover the province by their assistance, and in the meantime to make its possession as troublesome and as little valuable as possible to the English. To this end the Acadian priesthood, who were under the control of the Bishop of Quebec, were utilised as agents. Their mission was to preach discontent with English rule and denounce acquiescence in it as a sin against Heaven. Thirty years, however, of practical experience of King George's rule had been almost too much for the ceaseless thunders of the Church, when the short war of 1744 broke out which witnessed the capture of Louisbourg by Pepperell and Warren. This event rekindled some faint sparks of the old feeling and redoubled the incendiary efforts of the Canadian government. These were intensified when the French, having received Louisbourg back in 1748 commenced to make it more formidable than ever, and thus compelled Great Britain to reply by founding to the south of it the town and naval station of Halifax. For now not merely was British officialism, represented by two or three isolated forts, planted in Acadia, but the British axe was sounding in the forests of the eastern sea-board, and the advance of British civilisation threatened the supremacy of the French Acadian. The origin of Halifax differed from that of all other British American settlements. It was purely the work of the government, who landed there in one year nearly 3000 immigrants, of whom the men were mostly soldiers thrown out of occupation by the peace. Cornwallis, uncle of the ill-fated general of Yorktown memory, was governor, an admittedly just and kindly man. He had a difficult task before him. The energies of the Canadian government, the French officials at Louisbourg and their willing tools the priests, now exerted themselves to the utmost to make 122 Expulsion of the Acadians [1755 rebels and malcontents of the simple Acadian peasantry. The most merciless exponent of this heartless policy was a certain Abbé la Loutre, of whose performances even Frenchmen of his day wrote with horror and his employers with apologies that they themselves needed. The only weapons at their disposal were fear and superstition. A fresh oath of allegiance was for good reasons now required by Cornwallis; and few Acadian settlers, of their own accord, could have hesitated for a moment to repeat a form which had brought them such tangible material blessings. But they were given no choice: acquiescence in heretic rule was represented as a deadly sin against God. Those for whom this argument was not strong enough were threatened with a more visible terror, for the forests were full of Indians, many of them so-called Christians, and all under the influence of the French. To a peasantry so primitive in their faith and so superstitious, the threat of eternal damnation was generally convincing. To the more sceptical the immediate loss of their scalp was a worse alternative than the threat of expatriation so often uttered by the long-suffering British governors. Crushed between these upper and nether millstones, great numbers of Acadians had fled in despair to the woods and had adopted a life of outlawry. Many left the country and their possessions, beginning life again in French territory. These courses were equally convenient to the French authorities, who showed no spark of feeling for their miserable compatriots. British settlers round Halifax were killed and scalped. The lives of the soldiers of the outlying garrisons were unsafe a mile from their forts. The history of Acadia from 1749 to 1755 is a woeful story. The cruel and masterful tactics of La Loutre and his abettors were contemptuously disguised. The British officials spared no efforts to recall the harassed and panic-stricken Acadian peasantry to their former happy condition, but their attempts were vain. A great struggle was at hand, and a population of professed malcontents, whatever the true reason of their attitude, was more than the ethics of the eighteenth century could be expected to tolerate. An ultimatum was accordingly issued. Its date was more than once deferred in the hopes of reason mastering terror; but finally it seemed to both colonial and British officials, men notable for their qualities of head and heart, that there was no alternative but deportation. Everybody knows the sentimental side of the story of Evangeline, few the causes that compelled it. Some 8000 Acadians of all ages and both sexes were forcibly embarked and distributed, with all the regard for family ties possible in the circumstances, among the Atlantic colonies. It was a lamentable eviction, and the ultimate lot of its victims was anything but happy. It is a poor consolation to know that those who found their way to Quebec met with less consideration and kindness than those who were cast upon the charity of the Puritans of New England and the Anglicans of the South. This memorable incident, which resulted in Nova Scotia 1755] General Braddock's expedition 123 becoming mainly British in blood as well as in allegiance, occurred in September, 1755. A few weeks earlier an event of much greater significance had taken place to the southward. The urgent warnings of certain colonial governors to the English ministry in the previous year, coupled with the noise of these backward skirmishes, had not fallen on deaf ears. Parliament voted money for the defence of the colonies; and in the spring of 1755 the 44th and 48th regiments sailed from Cork for Virginia. They were each 500 strong, to be increased to 700 by enlistment in America. They went into camp at Alexandria, a place upon the Potomac river immediately opposite to the present city of Washington. The object of their attack was a stronghold named Fort Duquesne, constructed by the French on the Ohio on the site of one taken from the British, as noted above. The leader of the British force was General Braddock. He was a middle-aged man and an approved soldier of the type of the Duke of Cumberland his master. His faults were those of his period and have been emphasised and exaggerated by writers of both history and fiction, while his courage and honesty, though undisputed, have received less notice. He is said to have been given to violent language, to have been lacking in consideration for colonial susceptibilities, to have underrated both provincial troops and Indians, and to have been over-confident in a style of war with which he was unfamiliar. Of many of these charges and others unworthy of mention Braddock may be in whole or part acquitted. He had been led to expect active assistance from the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania, whose interests were chiefly threatened by the French agencies; but, with the exception of 500 irregular troops to be paid by the Crown, he received none. Means of transport for his army through nearly 200 miles of forest wilderness and over rugged mountains were utterly lacking till Benjamin Franklin, of his own initiative, by threats and entreaties obtained the requisite number of waggons from the Pennsylvanian farmers. Much enthusiasm was exhibited at the presence of the redoubtable British infantry in America, but little practical help was given by the legislatures, and Braddock was sorely tried. Washington, however, who had formerly commanded the Virginian levies and was now the General's aide-de-camp, was of great service. The expedition started early in June from Fort Cumberland on the Potomac, some seventy miles above Alexandria, whence it was 122 miles to Fort Duquesne. The difficulties of this march through the primeval forests and over the high ridges and rugged defiles of the Alleghanies must be left to the imagination, since there is no space here for detail. The force consisted of about 1400 regulars and 600 provincials. Of the promised Indians, through no fault of the General, there were practically none. The French garrison at Fort Duquesne was believed to be strong, while the woods swarmed with Indians in the French interest. When about half the march had been accomplished with the utmost difficulty, Braddock |