ON CAPE BRETON. 229 



caut in uumber, they were as a rule skilfully managed, and in the early part of the 

 struggle the English had no commander to compare with Montcalm for military genius. 

 If there had been even a quarter million of people in Canada the contest could never 

 have ended so suddenly on the heights of Quebec. In some respects the French Cana- 

 dians were more manageable in war than the English colonists. They had none of that 

 independence of feeling and disposition to rebel against military discipline that was often 

 shown by the English colonists, especially of New England, when they accompanied the 

 regular forces on a campaign. The French Canadians were always ready to obey the 

 orders of their military governors and chiefs. No legislative bodies existed in Canada to 

 interfere with and thwart the plans and orders of military commanders, but the whole 

 Canadian people acted as a unit to be moved and directed at the will of the king's officers. 

 The Indian tribes from Acadia to the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Illinois were, with the 

 exception of the Five Nations, always friendly to the French since the days of Cham- 

 plain — the warm allies of a people who fraternized naturally with thera, and it would 

 have been an unhappy day for the English colonists had eighty or a hundred thousand 

 Canadians been able to arm and, under the skilful generalship of Montcalm, swoop down 

 with their savage allies on the English colonial settlements. But the French of Canada 

 were never able, as a rule, to do more than harass, by sudden raids and skirmishes, the 

 English of America, and at no time in colonial history was the capture of Boston or of 

 New York by a land force from Canada among the possibilities. The great current of 

 active thought and enterprise which developes a nation was always with the English 

 colonies, and though large schemes of ambition stimulated the energies of the bold and 

 adventurous men to whom the destinies of France were entrusted from the days of 

 La Salle to those of Montcalm, their ability to found a new empire in America under the 

 lilies of France was ever hindered by the slow development of the French settlements, by 

 the incapacity of the king and his ministers in France to grasp the importance of the 

 situation on this continent, and by their refusal to carry out the projects of men like the 

 astute La Galissonnière, who at once recognized the consequences of such neglect and 

 indifference, but foirud no one ready to favour his scheme of establishing large settle- 

 ments of French peasantry in Canada and Louisiana. France, we see now, had her great 

 opportunity in America, and lost it forever at Quebec in 1759. 



Before we proceed to the record of the second fall of Louisbourg — the first in a chain 

 of events which led to the conquest of Canada — it is necessary that we should briolly 

 review the history of the period which elapsed between the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and 

 the commencement of the Seven Years' War. "When English statesmen were informed of 

 the mistake they had made in restoring Cape Breton to France with such reckless haste, 

 they began to reflect on the best means of retrieving it as far as possible ; and at the sug- 

 gestion of Shirley and other colonists they set to work to bring an English population into 

 Nova Scotia and to make it a source of strength instead of weakness to the New England 

 communities. In 1749, the year of the formal surrender of Louisbourg, the city of 

 Halifax was founded on the -west side of the harbour, long known in Acadian history as 

 Chebouctou — a harbour remarkable for its spaciousness and freedom from ice in winter. 

 Here, under the directions of Governor Cornwallis, a town slowly grew up at the foot and 

 on the slopes of the hill, which was in later times crowned by a noble citadel, above 

 which has always floated the flag of Great Britain. Then followed the erection of a fort 



