1(32 AUTHENTIC HISTORY 



it was planned in Massachusetts, to be executed by the troops of that 

 colony, in conjunction with the regiments of Shirley and Peperell, the 

 command was given to Lieutenant-colonel Monckton, a British officer. 

 His second was Lieutenant-colonel Winslow, a major-general of the pro- 

 vincial militia. The provincial troops, amounting to near three thousand 

 men, embarked at Boston on the twentieth of May, and arrived in the 

 basin of Annapolis Eoyal, on the twenty-eighth of the same month. 

 They were afterwards joined by three hundred British soldiers with a 

 small train of artillery. In little more than a month, with the loss of 

 three men only, they obtained possession of the whole province of Nova 

 Scotia, according to their own definition of its boundaries. This easy 

 conquest elated the Colonies, and produced sanguine anticipations from 

 their future efforts. 



" It would have been well for humanity and the honor of the British 

 name, had the victors enjoyed their triumph in mercy. But they dis- 

 graced their conquest by scenes of devastation and misery, scarce paral- 

 leled in modern history. The inhabitants of Nova Scotia were chiefly 

 descendants of French parentage. By the treaty of Utrecht, (1713) they 

 were permitted to retain their lands, taking the oath of allegiance to their 

 new sovereign, with the qualification that they should not be compelled 

 to bear arms against their Indian neighbors, or their countrymen; and this 

 immunity was, at subsequent periods, assured to their children. Such was 

 the notoriety of this compact, that, for near a half century, they had borne 

 the name, and, with few exceptions, maintained the character, of neutrals. 

 But, at length, excited by their ancient love of France, their religious 

 attachments, and their doubts of the English rights, some of these mild, 

 frugal, industrious, and pious people, were seduced to take arms. Three 

 hundred were found in Beau Sejour at its capture; but it was stipulated 

 that they should be left in the same situation as when the army arrived, 

 and should not be punished for any thing subsequently done. Yet a 

 Council was called by Lawrence, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, at 

 which the admirals Boscawen and Moyston assisted, to determine the fate 

 of these unfortunate people. Sound policy and military law demanded 

 the punishment of the leaders of the insurgents, but humanity forbade 

 the extension of this punishment wider than the offence — the involvement 

 of the innocent and the guilty. Of a population exceeding seven thousand, 

 not more than three hundred had taken arms; and, of these, some were 

 compelled to assume them by the enemy, from whom many had suffered 

 much in consequence of their refusal to resist the English. The Council 

 required the elders of the people to take the oath of allegiance to the 

 British monarch without the exemption which, during fifty years, had 

 been granted to them and their fathers. Upon their refusal, it was re- 

 solved to expel them from their country, to confiscate their property, 



