470 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



these French aggressions upon Nova Scotia and Newfound- 

 land ; and it gave the British subjects in America the oppor- 

 tunity they especially desired to remove, if possible, the 

 humiliation brought on them by the disgraceful peace treaty 

 of Aix la Chapelle. A strong British fleet commanded by 

 Lord Amherst, with the gallant Wolfe second in command, 

 and supported by nearly one-third of the fighting strength 

 of Massachusetts, again captured Louisburg in 1758, and 

 razed its battlements to the ground ; the following year 

 Wolfe marched into Canada and captured Quebec. With 

 the fall of these two strongholds, French power in the New 

 World was broken, and Great Britain became mistress of 

 her possessions in North America. 



It was during this same war that the attempt was made by 

 the British authorities in Nova Scotia to remove from that 

 colony all vestiges of Latin influence, by forcibly expelling 

 the French settlers from the land. The execution of this 

 harsh and cruel policy furnishes the saddest chapter in the 

 somewhat romantic history of Acadia. Thousands were de- 

 ported to the Virginia and New England colonies, where 

 they found a scant welcome, and many hundreds perished 

 miserably through exposure and want. The pathetic incidents 

 connected with the depopulation of the French village of 

 Grand Pre, conducted by the unwilling Lieutenant Winslow, 

 who declared the duty " very disagreeble to my natural.make 

 and temper," gave to Longfellow the theme for " Evange- 

 line." If the chroniclers of the time are reliable, the natives 

 of Grand Pre were not altogether the simple-hearted, peace- 

 loving people depicted by the poet, but were rather a 

 troublesome and somewhat vicious colony of fishermen 

 who lost no opportunity to inflict injury upon the New 

 England skippers who came in contact with them. Candor, 

 however, compels one in forming estimates of the moral 

 qualities of the French and English fishermen of the seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth centuries, to divide honors about 

 equally between them. If the French in Nova Scotia were 

 sullen and unruly under English dominion, and if they enjoyed 

 harrying New Englanders when they came to the Bay of 



