ON CAPE BEETON. 



241 



sieur Drucour refused to grant him permissiou to leave the fortress to its fate, he allowed 

 the great proportion of the officers and crews of the ships to find shelter in the town, to 

 the discontent of the garrison who found them of relatively little use in the defence. 

 The commander of the Aréthuse, however, soon found his position near the barachois 

 too hot as the redoubts and works of the English made progress, and after making some 

 repairs to the vessel, he succeeded in evading the English fleet and reaching France, 

 though he fell subsequently into the hands of the enemy whilst cruising in the Chan- 

 nel. Of the five ships that remained in the harbour, three were afterwards destroyed by 

 fire which originated from a bomb which fell ui)on one of them from the Eng- 

 lish batteries. The two remaining vessels, the Prudent and the Bienfaisant, were 

 captured during the night by six hundred sailors under the command of Captains Lefroy 

 and Balfour, and despite the perfect rain of missiles from the French batteries the Eng- 

 lishmen destroyed the former as soon as it ran aground and carried the other successfully 

 out of the harbour.' Then not a single man of war was left out of the fleet of fourteen 

 vessels that had hoisted the French flag at the commencement of the siege." It is rarely 

 that one is called upon in the history of naval warfare to record a more signal destruction 

 of a squadron which elfected nothing for the defence and is only redeemed from the 

 charge of cowardice or of remarkable feebleness by the bravery of Vauquelain, who 

 proved that had he been in command, instead of incompetent Desgouttes, he would certainly 

 have shown that there were enough brave men in the little fleet to vindicate the honour 

 of the French flag and give substantial aid to the hard pressed garrison. 



Day by day the lines grew closer to the falling town, the breaches in the fortifications 

 became larger, great masses of wall began to tumble, and the cannon were dismounted 

 and rendered useless. Several sorties were attempted, but only one against the sixth 

 redoubt and entrenchment, constructed by Wolfe to the westward of Black Point, had any 

 success. The French surprised a company of grenadiers that were stationed in these 



' "The renowned Captain Cook, then serving a.s a petty ofiicer on board of one of tli"? British ships of war 

 co-operated in this exploit, and wrote an account of it to a friend in England," Grahame's " United States," iv. 28. 

 Cuok snb.se(iuently distinguished himself at Quebec and in Newfoundland, of which he explored the interior, 

 then entirely unknown to the world. See " Encyclopedia Britannica,'' 0th éd., Avhicli, while giving a very accurate 

 account of his great services as a navigator, does not notice his presence at Louisbourg in 1758. 



'' The following statement shows the names of the French men of war in Louisbourg, June 1, 1 758, and their 

 subsequent fate : 



The foregoing statement is made up from the most authentic sources. It appears that six vessels were sunk at 

 the entrance of the harbour by the governor's orders— live men of war as above, and another, either La Ville de 

 St. Malo (a merchantman) or an English prize, to which allusion is made in the memoir attributed to Chevalier .Tolin- 

 stone (App. IV.), The same memoir gives the number of sunken ships at five, but Drucour and others place it at 

 six altogether — four on the first occasion and two subsequently. Parkman (" Montcalm and Wolfe " ii. 54 n.) gives 

 an imperfect list of the ships in the port, the Diane being omitted. Murdoch (" Hist, of N. S. ii. 337,") is also 

 incorrect in some particulars. 



Sec. II, 1891. 31. 



