Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 8, Part 3

When Monckton and the Massachusetts men laid siege to Beauséjour, Governor Lawrence thought the moment favorable for exacting an unqualified oath of allegiance from the Acadians.

The presence of a superior and victorious force would help, he thought, to bring them to reason; and there were some indications that this would be the result.

A

number of Acadian families, who at the promptings of Le Loutre had emigrated to Cape Breton, had lately returned to Halifax, promising to be true subjects of King George if they could be allowed to repossess their lands.

They cheerfully took the oath; on which they were reinstated in their old homes, and supplied with food for the winter.

[271] Their example unfortunately found few imitators.

[Footnote 271: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 228. ] Early in June the principal inhabitants of Grand Pré and other settlements about the Basin of Mines brought a memorial, signed with their crosses, to Captain Murray, the military commandant in their district, and desired him to send it to Governor Lawrence, to whom it was addressed.

Murray reported that when they brought it to him they behaved with the greatest insolence, though just before they had been unusually submissive.

He thought that this change of demeanor was caused by a report which had lately got among them of a French fleet in the Bay of Fundy; for it had been observed that any rumor of an approaching French force always had a similar effect.

The deputies who brought the memorial were sent with it to Halifax, where they laid it before the Governor and Council.

It declared that the signers had kept the qualified oath they had taken, "in spite of the solicitations and dreadful threats of another power," and that they would continue to prove "an unshaken fidelity to His Majesty, provided that His Majesty shall allow us the same liberty that he has _[hitherto]_ granted us."

Their memorial then demanded, in terms highly offensive to the Council, that the guns, pistols, and other weapons, which they had lately been required to give up, should be returned to them.

They were told in reply that they had been protected for many years in the enjoyment of their lands, though they had not complied with the terms on which the lands were granted; "that they had always been treated by the Government with the greatest lenity and tenderness, had enjoyed more privileges than other English subjects, and had been indulged in the free exercise of their religion;" all which they acknowledged to be true.

The Governor then told them that their conduct had been undutiful and ungrateful;

"that they had discovered a constant disposition to assist His Majesty's enemies and to distress his subjects; that they had not only furnished the enemy with provisions and ammunition, but had refused to supply the [_English_] inhabitants or Government, and when they did supply them, had exacted three times the price for which they were sold at other markets."

The hope was then expressed that they would no longer obstruct the settlement of the province by aiding the Indians to molest and kill English settlers; and they were rebuked for saying in their memorial that they would be faithful to the King only on certain conditions.

The Governor added that they had some secret reason for demanding _their_ weapons, and flattered themselves that French troops were at hand to support their insolence.

In conclusion, they were told that now was a good opportunity to prove their sincerity by taking the oath of allegiance, in the usual form, before the Council.

They replied that they had not made up their minds on that point, and could do nothing till they had consulted their constituents.

Being reminded that the oath was personal to themselves, and that six years had already been given them to think about it, they asked leave to retire and confer together.

This was granted, and at the end of an hour they came back with the same answer as before; whereupon they were allowed till ten o'clock on the next morning for a final decision.

[272] [Footnote 272: _Minutes of Council at Halifax, 3 July, 1755_, in _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 247-255. ] At the appointed time the Council again met, and the deputies were brought in.

They persisted stubbornly in the same refusal.

"They were then informed," says the record, "that the Council could no longer look on them as subjects to His Britannic Majesty, but as subjects to the King of France, and as such they must hereafter be treated; and they were ordered to withdraw."

A discussion followed in the Council.

It was determined that the Acadians should be ordered to send new deputies to Halifax, who should answer for them, once for all, whether they would accept the oath or not; that such as refused it should not thereafter be permitted to take it; and "that effectual measures ought to be taken to remove all such recusants out of the province."

The deputies, being then called in and told this decision, became alarmed, and offered to swear allegiance in the terms required.

The answer was that it was too late; that as they had refused the oath under persuasion, they could not be trusted when they took it under compulsion.

It remained to see whether the people at large would profit by their example.

"I am determined," wrote Lawrence to the Lords of Trade, "to bring the inhabitants to a compliance, or rid the province of such perfidious subjects."

[273] First, in answer to the summons of the Council, the deputies from Annapolis appeared, declaring that they had always been faithful to the British Crown, but flatly refusing the oath.

They were told that, far from having been faithful subjects, they had always secretly aided the Indians, and that many of them had been in arms against the English; that the French were threatening the province; and that its affairs had reached a crisis when its inhabitants must either pledge themselves without equivocation to be true to the British Crown, or else must leave the country.

They all declared that they would lose their lands rather than take the oath.

The Council urged them to consider the matter seriously, warning them that, if they now persisted in refusal, no farther choice would be allowed them; and they were given till ten o'clock on the following Monday to make their final answer.

[Footnote 273: _Lawrence to Lords of Trade, 18 July, 1755. _] When that day came, another body of deputies had arrived from Grand Pré and the other settlements of the Basin of Mines; and being called before the Council, both they and the former deputation absolutely refused to take the oath of allegiance.

These two bodies represented nine tenths of the Acadian population within the peninsula.

"Nothing," pursues the record of the Council, "now remained to be considered but what measures should be taken to send the inhabitants away, and where they should be sent to."

If they were sent to Canada, Cape Breton, or the neighboring islands, they would strengthen the enemy, and still threaten the province.

It was therefore resolved to distribute them among the various English colonies, and to hire vessels for the purpose with all despatch.

[274] [Footnote 274: _Minutes of Council, 4 July--28 July_, in _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 255-267. Copies of these and other parts of the record were sent at the time to England, and are now in the Public Record Office, along with the letters of Lawrence.

] The oath, the refusal of which had brought such consequences, was a simple pledge of fidelity and allegiance to King George II.

and his successors.

Many of the Acadians had already taken an oath of fidelity, though with the omission of the word "allegiance," and, as they insisted, with a saving clause exempting them from bearing arms.

The effect of this was that they did not regard themselves as British subjects, and claimed, falsely as regards most of them, the character of neutrals.

It was to put an end to this anomalous state of things that the oath without reserve had been demanded of them.

Their rejection of it, reiterated in full view of the consequences, is to be ascribed partly to a fixed belief that the English would not execute their threats, partly to ties of race and kin, but mainly to superstition.

They feared to take part with heretics against the King of France, whose cause, as already stated, they had been taught to regard as one with the cause of God; they were constrained by the dread of perdition.

"If the Acadians are miserable, remember that the priests are the cause of it," writes the French officer Boishébert to the missionary Manach.

[275] [Footnote 275: On the oath and his history, compare a long note by Mr. Akin in _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 263-267. Winslow in his Journal gives an abstract of a memorial sent him by the Acadians, in which they say that they had refused the oath, and so forfeited their lands, from motives of religion.

I have shown in a former chapter that the priests had been the chief instruments in preventing them from accepting the English government.

Add the following:-- "Les malheurs des Accadiens sont beaucoup moins leur ouvrage que le fruit des sollicitations et des démarches des missionnaires."

_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 6 Mai, 1760_.

"Si nous avons la guerre, et si les Accadiens sont misérables, souvenez vous que ce sont les prêtres qui en sont la cause."

_Boishébert á Manach, 21 Fév. 1760_.

Both these writers had encouraged the priests in their intrigues so long as there were likely to profit the French Government, and only blamed them after they failed to accomplished what was expected of them.

"Nous avons six missionnaires dont l'occupation perpetuelle est de porter les esprits au fanatisme et à la vengeance....

Je ne puis supporter dans nos prêtres ces odieuses déclamations qu'ils font tous les jours aux sauvages: 'Les Anglois sont les ennemis de Dieu, les compagnons du Diable.'

" Pichon, _Lettres et Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cap-Breton_, 160, 161. (La Haye, 1760. )] The Council having come to a decision, Lawrence acquainted Monckton with the result, and ordered him to seize all the adult males in the neighborhood of Beauséjour; and this, as we have seen, he promptly did.

It remains to observe how the rest of the sentence was carried into effect.

Instructions were sent to Winslow to secure the inhabitants on or near the Basin of Mines and place them on board transports, which, he was told, would soon arrive from Boston.

His orders were stringent: "If you find that fair means will not do with them, you must proceed by the most vigorous measures possible, not only in compelling them to embark, but in depriving those who shall escape of all means of shelter or support, by burning their houses and by destroying everything that may afford them the means of subsistence in the country."

Similar orders were given to Major Handfield, the regular officer in command at Annapolis.

On the fourteenth of August Winslow set out from his camp at Fort Beauséjour, or Cumberland, on his unenviable errand.

He had with him but two hundred and ninety-seven men.

His mood of mind was not serene.

He was chafed because the regulars had charged his men with stealing sheep;

and he was doubly vexed by an untoward incident that happened on the morning of his departure.

He had sent forward his detachment under Adams, the senior captain, and they were marching by the fort with drums beating and colors flying, when Monckton sent out his aide-de-camp with a curt demand that the colors should be given up, on the ground that they ought to remain with the regiment.

Whatever the soundness of the reason, there was no courtesy in the manner of enforcing it.

"This transaction raised my temper some," writes Winslow in his Diary; and he proceeds to record his opinion that "it is the most ungenteel, ill-natured thing that ever I saw."

He sent Monckton a quaintly indignant note, in which he observed that the affair "looks odd, and will appear so in future history;" but his commander, reckless of the judgments of posterity, gave him little satisfaction.

Thus ruffled in spirit, he embarked with his men and sailed down Chignecto Channel to the Bay of Fundy.

Here, while they waited the turn of the tide to enter the Basin of Mines, the shores of Cumberland lay before them dim in the hot and hazy air, and the promontory of Cape Split, like some misshapen monster of primeval chaos, stretched its portentous length along the glimmering sea, with head of yawning rock, and ridgy back bristled with forests.

Borne on the rushing flood, they soon drifted through the inlet, glided under the rival promontory of Cape Blomedon, passed the red sandstone cliffs of Lyon's Cove, and descried the mouths of the rivers Canard and Des Habitants, where fertile marshes, diked against the tide, sustained a numerous and thriving population.

Before them spread the boundless meadows of Grand Pré, waving with harvests or alive with grazing cattle; the green slopes behind were dotted with the simple dwellings of the Acadian farmers, and the spire of the village church rose against a background of woody hills.

It was a peaceful, rural scene, soon to become one of the most wretched spots on earth.

Winslow did not land for the present, but held his course to the estuary of the River Pisiquid, since called the Avon.

Here, where the town of Windsor now stands, there was a stockade called Fort Edward, where a garrison of regulars under Captain Alexander Murray kept watch over the surrounding settlements.

The New England men pitched their tents on shore, while the sloops that had brought them slept on the soft bed of tawny mud left by the fallen tide.

Winslow found a warm reception, for Murray and his officers had been reduced too long to their own society not to welcome the coming of strangers.

The two commanders conferred together.

Both had been ordered by Lawrence to "clear the whole country of such bad subjects;" and the methods of doing so had been outlined for their guidance.

Having come to some understanding with his brother officer concerning the duties imposed on both, and begun an acquaintance which soon grew cordial on both sides, Winslow embarked again and retraced his course to Grand Pré, the station which the Governor had assigned him.

"Am pleased," he wrote to Lawrence, "with the place proposed by your Excellency for our reception [_the village church_].

I have sent for the elders to remove all sacred things, to prevent their being defiled by heretics."

The church was used as a storehouse and place of arms; the men pitched their tents between it and the graveyard; while Winslow took up his quarters in the house of the priest, where he could look from his window on a tranquil scene.

Beyond the vast tract of grassland to which Grand Pré owed its name, spread the blue glistening breast of the Basin of Mines;

beyond this again, the distant mountains of Cobequid basked in the summer sun; and nearer, on the left, Cape Blomedon reared its bluff head of rock and forest above the sleeping waves.

As the men of the settlement greatly outnumbered his own, Winslow set his followers to surrounding the camp with a stockade.

Card-playing was forbidden, because it encouraged idleness, and pitching quoits in camp, because it spoiled the grass.

Presently there came a letter from Lawrence expressing a fear that the fortifying of the camp might alarm the inhabitants.

To which Winslow replied that the making of the stockade had not alarmed them in the least, since they took it as a proof that the detachment was to spend the winter with them; and he added, that as the harvest was not yet got in, he and Murray had agreed not to publish the Governor's commands till the next Friday.

He concludes: "Although it is a disagreeable part of duty we are put upon, I am sensible it is a necessary one, and shall endeavor strictly to obey your Excellency's orders."

On the thirtieth, Murray, whose post was not many miles distant, made him a visit.

They agreed that Winslow should summon all the male inhabitants about Grand Pré to meet him at the church and hear the King's orders, and that Murray should do the same for those around Fort Edward.

Winslow then called in his three captains,--Adams, Hobbs, and Osgood,--made them swear secrecy, and laid before them his instructions and plans; which latter they approved.

Murray then returned to his post, and on the next day sent Winslow a note containing the following: "I think the sooner we strike the stroke the better, therefore will be glad to see you here as soon as conveniently you can.

I shall have the orders for assembling ready written for your approbation, only the day blank, and am hopeful everything will succeed according to our wishes.

The gentlemen join me in our best compliments to you and the Doctor."

On the next day, Sunday, Winslow and the Doctor, whose name was Whitworth, made the tour of the neighborhood, with an escort of fifty men, and found a great quantity of wheat still on the fields.

On Tuesday Winslow "set out in a whale-boat with Dr. Whitworth and Adjutant Kennedy, to consult with Captain Murray in this critical conjuncture."

They agreed that three in the afternoon of Friday should be the time of assembling; then between them they drew up a summons to the inhabitants, and got one Beauchamp, a merchant, to "put it into French."

It ran as follows:-- By John Winslow, Esquire, Lieutenant-Colonel and Commander of His Majesty's troops at Grand Pré, Mines, River Canard, and places adjacent.

To the inhabitants of the districts above named, as well ancients as young men and lads.

Whereas His Excellency the Governor has instructed us of his last resolution respecting the matters proposed lately to the inhabitants, and has ordered us to communicate the same to the inhabitants in general in person, His Excellency being desirous that each of them should be fully satisfied of His Majesty's intentions, which he has also ordered us to communicate to you, such as they have been given him.

We therefore order and strictly enjoin by these presents to all the inhabitants, as well of the above-named districts as of all the other districts, both old men and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age, to attend at the church in Grand Pré on Friday, the fifth instant, at three of the clock in the afternoon, that we may impart what we are ordered to communicate to them;

declaring that no excuse will be admitted on any pretence whatsoever, on pain of forfeiting goods and chattels in default.

Given at Grand Pré, the second of September, in the twenty-ninth year of His Majesty's reign, A. D.

1755. A similar summons was drawn up in the name of Murray for the inhabitants of the district of Fort Edward.

Captain Adams made a reconnoissance of the rivers Canard and Des Habitants, and reported "a fine country and full of inhabitants, a beautiful church, and abundance of the goods of the world."

Another reconnoissance by Captains Hobbs and Osgood among the settlements behind Grand Pré brought reports equally favorable.

On the fourth, another letter came from Murray: "All the people quiet, and very busy at their harvest; if this day keeps fair, all will be in here in their barns.

I

hope to-morrow will crown all our wishes."

The Acadians, like the bees, were to gather a harvest for others to enjoy.

The summons was sent out that afternoon.

Powder and ball were served to the men, and all were ordered to keep within the lines.