204 J. a. BOURINOT 



saw that the great nations were on the eve of a general war. The question of the Austrian 

 succession had been a menace to Europe for years, and it was at last to culminate in a 

 conflict which, despite the short truce of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1*748, never ended until the 

 treaty of Paris in 1163. France had been pledged to the Pragmatic Sanction by which 

 Charles VI, Emperor of Germany, provided that his hereditary dominions should pass to 

 his daughter Maria Theresa. When the Emperor died, France believed that the oppor- 

 tunity had come for breaking up the dominions of her great rival and increasing her own 

 power on the continent of Europe. We can sympathize with the ambitions and necessi- 

 ties of the Austrian queen fighting for her kingdom and her child, but we look in vain 

 for generous or honourable motives among those who were either her allies or her foes in 

 the progress of that memorable war. France coveted the Netherlands, and Spain, Milan ; 

 Frederick of Prussia had no higher desire than to grasp Silesia and to drive Austria from 

 G-ermany. The king of England was jealous of Prussia and thought more of his 

 Hanoverian throne than of his English crown. It became the interest of England to 

 assist Austria and prevent the success of France, now the ally of Spain, forced to defend 

 her colonial possessions in America. It is wearisome to follow the intrigues and compli- 

 cations that the history of these times presents, and their only interest for us is the effect 

 which the war that broke out between England and France in 1*744 had on the destinies 

 of their respective colonies on this continent. From 1*740 to 1744 England had no reason 

 to congratulate herself on the results of the war either in Europe or America. Her lleet 

 met only with disaster, and her commerce was destroyed on the Spanish Main. Four 

 years later she won a victory over the Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean, but hardly had 

 her people ceased celebrating the event than they heard that the combined forces of 

 Hanover, Holland and England under the Duke of Cumberland had been badly beaten at 

 Fontenoy. 



Those were days of gloom in England as her statesmen and people surveyed the situ- 

 ation on Europe, and saw their interests sacrificed by the stubborn ambition of the king 

 and the incompetency of his ministers. At last when the prospect was darkest, there 

 appeared a glimmer of light above the western horizon across the seas. " We are now 

 making bonfires for Cape Breton and thundering over Genoa," wrote Horace Walpole, 

 " while our army is running away in Flanders." ' For the strongest fortress .m French 

 America, Englishmen heard with amazement, had surrendered to the attack of four thou- 

 sand colonial fishermen, farmers and merchants, called suddenly from their industrial 

 occupations, to achieve one of the most audacious acts in colonial history — certainly the 

 most memorable in the records of the colonies until the war of independence thirty years 

 later. 



In recording the history of this famous episode of colonial times, writers have some- 

 times hesitated to say to whom should be attributed the honour of suggesting a project 

 which, when first seriously mentioned, seemed to be too bold to be realized by men who 

 were ignorant of those scientific rules which were absolutely essential to a siege of 

 fortifications illustrating the genius of the best engineering skill of those times. It is 

 admitted on all sides that one of the first persons to advocate the scheme was William 

 Vaughan of New Hampshire, who is described by one writer as "a whimsical, wild pro- 

 jector," words which have been before applied to the originators of projects which have 



' " Letters to Horace Mann," July 2G, 1745. 



