ON CAPE BEETON. 215 



colouial forces, however iuured to severe labour mauy of them might be. One of them 

 successfully devised a plan of dragging the cauriou by sledges over the uneven surface 

 between Flat Point Cove and the besieging works. From the beginning to the end of the 

 siege, however, the colonial troops showed an amount of endurance, patience and cheer- 

 fulness in carrying out the orders of their officers that no regular troops could surpass. 

 The men engaged in rough sports even while cannon balls were whizzing around them, 

 and one severe critic of the expedition has written that "this siege was carried on in a 

 tumultuary manner resembling a Cambridge commencement." ' Many of them could 

 not be provided with comfortable tents in consequence of the dearth of suitable material 

 in some of the colonies;- and were obliged to find protection in camps rudely constructed 

 of sod and spruce boughs. They performed their duties with a recklessness and an indif- 

 ference to danger which was probably in a measure the result of their inexperience in such 

 affairs. They laughed at the scientific instructions of Bastide, an eminent engineer, who 

 arrived, late in the siege, from Annapolis to assist in the operations against the fortress. 

 Indeed, no regular force could hardly have performed the same labours with as much 

 confidence and zeal as these men animated by religious as well as patriotic motives, and 

 feeling the honour and prestige of New England so deeply involved in the success of an 

 enterprise thoroughly colonial in its inception and execution. 



By the eighteenth day of the siege the batteries began to show their work on the 

 walls at the west gate, the principal point of attack. Then occurred another event of 

 even greater importance than the evacuation of the grand battery, and that was the cap- 

 ture of the French man of war Vigilante, manned by five hundred men and armed with 

 sixty-four guns, which had arrived off the harbour with a cargo of stores for the town, 

 and which had taken the place of the spring ship that had been accidentally burnt in 

 Brest harbour during the spring of this year. This success raised the hopes of the land 

 forces, who were beginning to feel that unless the island battery was destroyed and the 

 fleet enabled to enter the harbour to join in a combined attack on the fortress, the siege 

 might continue indefinitely until succour could arrive from France and Louisbourg be 

 saved from its perilous position. An attack that was made on this battery by a large 

 force proved a disastrous failure, and sixty men were killed and one hiindred and sixteen 

 made prisoners by the French. This unfortunate expedition appears to have been under- 

 taken chiefly to satisfy the pressing demands of Warren that no time should be lost in 

 making a simultaneous assault by the army and fleet on the fortress, as there was every 

 likelihood of succour reaching the French at any moment. The confident and impetuoixs 

 Vaughan appears to have been among the ardent promoters of this enterprise, the practic- 

 ability and wisdom of which were doubted by the majority of the colonial officers except, 

 strange to say, by the cool and judicious Pepperrell himself The expedition was composed 

 mostly of volunteers from the troops and transports, and was headed by a Captain 

 Brooks whose head, according to one account, was split in two by a cutlass as he was at- 

 tempting to haul down the French flag in the battery into which it is believed he and a 

 few other brave fellows succeeded in forcing their way. 



' Douglass' " Summary," i. 352. 



'^ "All the ticklenburgh and small canvas in the province was purchased by the committee of war, but fur a 

 great part of the tents they were forced to buy common oznaburgs."— Belknap, "Hist, of New Hamp.," ii. 377 n. 



