196 J. G. BOUEmOT 



the siege of 1Y45, however, it was considered necessary to add a picquet line for addi- 

 tional defence. The Maurepas and Brouillan bastions protected Rochefort Point, from 

 which stretched to the southeast the rocks and island which guarded the harbour from 

 the ocean. Beyond the Maurepas bastion there was a large pond, over which was built a 

 long bridge of timber, communicating in a northwesterly line with the battery de la 

 grève, which mounted ten guns and was the most important work on the harbour front 

 of the town. The beach between the latter battery and the Dauphin bastion formed a 

 little cove, which was protected by the cross-fire from those points, and over which 

 stretched a boom in 1145 to guard against fireships and to i^revent the English from 

 landing from boats on that side of the town. The wall around this cove was made of 

 stone and earth, with a banquette and parapet for the use of musketeers. Here there 

 were four gates communicating with the shore, chiefly for the purpose of bring- 

 ing in supplies. Close by, within the walls, were the ordnance and general store- 

 houses of the town. Accounts vary as to the number of cannon that were actually 

 mounted within the circuit of the walls, but there were at the time of the first siege in 

 1745, embrasures for one hundred and forty-eight guns, and at the time of the second 

 attack, thirteen years later, additional defences, including a battery of twenty-four guns, 

 were erected at Rochefort Point. The town itself was well laid out in regular 

 streets, six running east and west and seven north and south, crossing each other at right 

 angles. A fine hospital and nunnery, built of stone, stood about the centre of the town. 

 Connected with the hospital of St. Jean de Dieu was a small chapel. The residences of 

 the people were generally small wooden structures on brick or stone foundations from 

 six to seven and a half feet from the ground. "In some houses," says one writer who was 

 in the town in 1145, "the whole ground floor was of stone and the stories of wood." ' 



If we are to judge from a return of the buildings used by the military establishment 

 in 1753,- the accommodation for officials of the government and the officers and soldiers 

 of the garrison was in many ways unsatisfactory. The barracks and officers' quarters 

 were too small and otherwise inadequate. In a place of the importance of Louisbourg, 

 one would expect to find all the public buildings constructed of solid masonry, and every 

 means taken to render them as safe as possible in times of war. The return in question 

 shows, however, that the public buildings erected by the French themselves were for the 

 most part of stone masonry, and that the wooden and other structures of a flimsy char- 

 acter in the town had been hastily erected by the English while in possession of the 

 place from 1745-49. In most cases these buildings were allowed to remain in xise until 

 1758, when the guns of the besiegers made sad havoc in the wooden erection known as 

 the English barracks. Shingles were largely used on the roofs of public as well as 

 private buildings, and the dangers of the inhabitants in times of siege consequently 

 increased to a criminal degree. As a matter of fact, Louisbourg appears to have been a 

 town which, in its original design, was intended to be a place of impregnable strength, 

 but which, through the parsimony of the French government, and the mismanagement 

 and dishonesty of officials, had not realized the ideas of its founders in point of security. 



' " A Voyage to South America, etc.," by Don George Juan and Don Antonia de Ulloa, (see infra, sec. V, and 

 App. X to this work), the latter of whom describes Louisbourg in 1745. 



'See App. XVII to this worli for an official (French) enumeration of the officers' quarters, barracks, guard- 

 houses, powder magazines and other liouses connected witli the military establishment of Louisbourg in 1753. 



