246 .T. G. BOUEINOT 



this unpleasant duty he could not refrain from writing to Amherst that they had " done 

 a great deal of mischief, to spread the terror of his Majesty's arms through the gulf, but 

 have added nothing to the reputation of them." Colonel Moncktou destroyed the posts 

 and scattered the French in the valley of the St. John river. Amherst himself hurried to 

 Lake Champlain, on hearing the news of the disaster at Ticouderoga, and assumed the 

 command which had been so unfortunately entrusted to Abercromby. In the following 

 year he forced Montcalm to retire to Quebec, and here the latter met his death on the 

 same battlefield where "died Wolfe victorious." It is a memorable fact in the history of 

 Louisbourg, which may well be noted here, that within a year after the capture of the 

 fortress another noble fleet and army assembled in the port and made preparations for 

 the conquest of Canada. A fleet of twenty-two ships of the line and many frigates, under 

 the orders of Admiral Saunders, and an army of nine thousand men, gave life once more 

 to the harbour, which was still full of floating ice from the vast fields that had been 

 passing down the gulf for weeks previously and barring the entrance to the eastern ports 

 of the island. When the colonial contingents had arrived and all the necessary arrange- 

 ments were completed, the last great fleet that has ever entered the harbour, once so 

 famous in history, sailed for the St. Lawrence with much enthusiasm and a stern deter- 

 mination in every heart to plant " British colours on every French fort, post and garrison 

 in America." ' Quebec fell, and the English by their ever famous victory gave a new 

 colonial empire to England. Levis, after the death of Montcalm, struggled to sustain the 

 honour of his country, but his victory over Murray at St. Foy could not save Canada from 

 her inevitable destiny, and in 1760 Montreal was surrendered to the English and Canada 

 was lost to France for ever. A remnant of Acadian French that slill lingered by the bays 

 and rivers of the Grulf of St. Lawrence and by the St. John, caused some apprehension to 

 the government of Nova Scotia after the fall of Louisbourg and the destruction of their 

 settlements by Wolfe and Monckton, and it was found necessary to remove as many as 

 possible to the vicinity of Halifax. Subsequently a number of these people were sent to 

 Boston, but as the authorities of Massachusetts would not receive them, they were forced 

 to return to Nova Scotia. Many of them went to the French islands of St. Pierre and 

 Miquelon and engaged in the fisheries, but eventually they came back to Nova Scotia and 

 New Brunswick, and, having consented to take the oath of allegiance to the English 

 sovereign, settled down quietly in the country. So, after a century of uneasiness, and of 

 misery towards the close, the old colonists of Acadie found a resting-place for themselves 

 and families, and in these later times their descendants are a quiet, if not energetic, class, 

 engaged in farming and fishing in the maritime provinces of Canada. 



VIII. Cession of Cape Breton to England by the Treaty of Paris in ITOS and its 



History as an English Possession. 



In 1763 the treaty of Paris ' was signed and France ceded to England : " Canada with 

 all its dependencies as well as the island of Cape Breton and all other islands and coasts 

 in the Grulf and Eiver Saint Lawrence and in general everything that depends on the said 

 countries, islands and coasts with the sovereignty, property and possession, and all rights 



' Knox, " Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America (1757-1700)," i. 279. 

 '■^ For textof this treaty so far as it affects Cape Breton see App. XVI to this work. 



