USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 34
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Just before the arrival of the Vigilant, it had been pro- posed that the men-of-war should anchor in the bay, and that the marines, and such of the sailors as could be spared, should go ashore and help to complete the batteries. Had this measure been adopted, the Vigilant would have entered the harbor, and the fortune of the expedition would have been changed .; But every circumstance seemed to favor the success of the invading army. Four days after the Vigi- lant had struck her colors, the English fleet was augmented by the arrival of two ships, the Princess Mary of sixty, and the Hector of forty guns. Shortly afterwards came the Canterbury and the Sunderland, each of sixty guns, and the Chester of fifty guns-in all, eleven men-of-war, viz., one of sixty-four, four of sixty, one of fifty, and five of forty guns.į
* Hutchinson, ii. 374, 375.
+ Hutchinson ; Trumbull. # Hutchinson, ii. 375, 376.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Looking off upon the waters, the garrison watched these vultures of the sea, one after another spreading their white wings along the line of the horizon, and pointing their beaks towards Chapeaurouge Bay. Already the island battery had ceased to make a regular response to the shot and shells of the besiegers, and was only heard to reply at long intervals, while the melancholy boom of its cannon, like a signal of distress, echoed ominously over the ocean.
Already the western gate of the town was shattered in pieces, and breaches had begun to be visible in the wall. The north-east battery was no longer defensible, and the cir- cular battery of sixteen guns, the only one that could com- mand the sea and defend the town against ships, was a ruin. Besides, they had every cause to expect that a general attack by sea and land would soon overwhelm the garrison and the town. With these necessities staring them in the face, the enemy, on the 15th of June, begged for a cessation of hos- tilities that the parties might agree upon some terms of capitulation. This was granted, and on the 17th of June, 1745, after a siege of forty-nine days, the city of Louisbourg, and the Island of Cape Breton, were surrendered into the hands of King George II .*
It is impossible to say what would have been the fate of the expedition had the garrison held out a little longer. The provincial army was already much in want of ammunition, greatly reduced from the hardships that it had encountered in constructing and afterwards manning the fascine bat- teries, and in lying upon the damp cold ground at night without tents that could protect them from the rains or even from the dews.
General Pepperell had sent off dispatches to New England for recruits, and fresh supplies of ammunition. The demand had been answered by the colonies as well as they were able, and about eight hundred men, and such munitions as could be purchased, had been sent forward. Connecticut voted to
* Bancroft, Hutchinson, Holmes, Trumbull.
407
IMPORTANCE OF THE VICTORY.
[1745.]
raise three hundred additional troops upon the same terms that had induced the first regiment to enlist .* Still, it is doubtful whether this reinforcement could have reached Louisbourg in time to relieve the army. Nature, too, would have conspired with the enemy to make the situation of the besiegers most dismal had the capitulation been postponed for a single day.
On the 18th of June, there came on a violent and protract- ed storm. For ten tedious days, it rained almost without in- termission. Had the soldiers been left to the frail covering of their tents, they must have been exposed to the most ex- treme hardships, and would perhaps have been compelled to take refuge on board the ships. But the houses of Louis- bourg afforded quite a different shelter, where the weary farmers had an opportunity to look off upon the storm with nothing to interrupt their serenity, except an occasional twinge of recollection that forced too vividly upon their minds the images of their absent wives and daughters, and the neglected corn-fields that should supply them with food. The steadiness and coolness manifested by the colonial troops during this long siege, afforded a commentary upon the in- stitutions under which they had been reared, that, had it been treasured up by the British government as a lesson, might have saved the more bitter lessons of experience that were to follow.
The intelligence of this wonderful victory reached Bos- ton on the 3rd of July, and was received with the most marked demonstrations of joy throughout the colonies. Even those provinces that had thought the project chimeri- cal, and had refused to join in it, now generously offered to share in the expenses incurred in prosecuting it. Pennsylva- nia appropriated four thousand pounds, New Jersey two thousand, and New York three thousand in money and provisions. t
Well might the capture of Louisbourg be regarded as an
* Colony Records, MS. + Trumbull, ii. 280.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
important achievement. It was a fortress of great strength, and France had expended vast sums of money upon, it with a view of making it the stronghold of her power upon the Atlan- tic coast. The town was encircled by a wall about eighty feet wide, and its ramparts were thirty feet in height, and mounted with sixty-five cannon which presented no slight obstacle to the approach of a besieging army. The mouth of the harbor was commanded by the grand battery with thirty forty-two pounders, and by the island battery, with an equal number of twenty-eight pounders. There were also in the fortress, sixteen mortars, and ammunition and stores to withstand a six months' seige. The garrison was made up of six hundred regulars and thirteen hundred militia-all well trained troops .*
Thus fortified, France had not dreamed that Louisbourg could fall a prey to her old and hated rival, before she could send a fleet and armament to relieve it. Much less had it entered the imagination of her most cautious statesman or military leader, that without the firing of a shot from a British ship, and without the aid of a British engineer, an army of provincial troops, undisciplined, and not even acting in ac- cordance with the expressed wishes of the English govern- ment, should have conceived and executed a plan that would have been thought so impracticable even in the hands of that government itself.
From the first commencement of those bloody wars be- tween the two powers for dominion over the western hemis- phere, no blow that France had received had penetrated so deeply, or inflicted such a rankling and immedicable wound.
The value of the prizes alone, amounted to about one million pounds sterling. Several rich merchantmen were taken during the siege, and to add to the mortification resulting from the loss, some of these ships were known to have been decoyed into Chapeaurouge Bay by the French flag that had been kept floating from the fort, in the vain
+ Hutchinson.
409
SERVICES OF CONNECTICUT.
[1745.]
hope of gathering together a sufficient number of armed ves- sels to relieve the garrison .*
New England not only captured Louisbourg, but for eleven months the place was entirely defended by New England men. More than five thousand colonial troops shared the honor either of capturing or of keeping possession of the fortress; and the disease that invaded the English garrison a few months after the capitula- tion, fell with the heaviest hand upon the colonies.t
Connecticut furnished for the undertaking about eleven hundred men. The expenses incurred in fitting out these men, and the wages that were paid them, came from the treasury of the colony. Connecticut petitioned the king to make her good for the money thus laid out, or to allow her to share in the prizes that had been taken during the expedi- tion. Her prayer was disregarded, and she submitted to the loss in silence.Į
The effect of this enterprise upon the two nations inter- ested in it, was what might have been readily anticipated. England, anxious to shun the burden while she claimed the glory of the victory, again resumed her old scheme-the re- duction of Canada-and resolved to sweep from the western continent the last vestige of French dominion. On the oth- er hand, France, stung to madness at the blow, determined to retrieve what she had thus ingloriously lost, and to add to her self-vindication, the consolations of revenge, by ranging the whole coast from Nova Scotia to Georgia.
* Holmes, ii. 27; Col. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 4, 60; Douglass, i. 336; Belknap's Hist. N. Hamp., ii. 193, 224. + Hutchinson.
# Our records contain frequent requests to the colonial agent in England, to petition for, and receive the money to reimburse the colony for her heavy expen- ses in said expedition; and in October, 1748, the agent is desired to obtain "a speedy payment of the money GRANTED to us by Parliament" for that purpose. It would seem, however, that the money was never received. This is more to be wondered at from the fact that £183,649, 2s, 1d, granted by Parliament for the purposes of reimbursement, arrived in Boston. It consisted of 215 chests, each containing 3,000 pieces of eight, and 100 casks of coined copper. There were 17 cart and truck loads of silver, and 10 truck loads of copper. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. This may have all been designed for Massachusetts, and used by her.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Animated by such motives, the two powers set themselves to perfect the enterprise that each had planned.
It was decided by the British government, that eight bat- talions of regular troops should meet at Louisbourg the forces to be raised in New England, and with a squadron under Admiral Warren, proceed up the St. Lawrence to Quebec ; while another army from New York and the other colonies, as far south as Virginia, should rendezvous at Al- bany, and under the command of Governor St. Clair, march across the country to Montreal. No specified number of soldiers was required to be raised by any of the colonies, but it was thought best, in a cause where all were interested, to leave it to the magnanimity and emulation of each. It was, however, intimated that the proportion of troops to be furn- ished from the provinces, should be at least five thousand men. New England herself raised five thousand three hun- dred soldiers ; New York and the other colonies, two thou- sand nine hundred. Of the number raised by New Eng- land, Connecticut furnished one thousand fighting men .* Such was the anxiety to accomplish this darling project, that the General Assembly of Connecticut was convoked imme- diately after the intentions of the government had been made known, and a bounty of thirty pounds was voted to every soldier who would enlist. It was also resolved, that if provis- ions could not be had without, they should be impressed. t
When we reflect that the members of the assembly were, by such a vote, exposing their own property to the same liabili- ties as that of their neighbors, and that the public sentiment would sustain such an order without compromising the popu- larity of the members, we see the reverence for law, and the manly spirit of self-sacrifice that has always characterized our people.
* The numbers of soldiers voted to be raised by the different colonies were very unequal, (as follows:)-New Hampshire, 500; Massachusetts, 3,500; Rhode Island, 300; Connecticut, 1,000; New York, 1,600; New Jersey, 500; Mary- land, 300 ; Virginia, 100 ; Pennsylvania, 400.
t Colony Records, MS.
411
PREPARATIONS FOR WAR.
[1746.]
In six weeks from the time when the preparations began, our troops were ready to embark.
At the same time, a formidable armament was being pre- pared at Portsmouth, under the command of Richard Lestock, admiral of the blue, with transports carrying six regiments to act in concert with the colonial army ; but such was the delay that attended the fitting out of the fleet, that when it was ready to sail, it was too late in the season to venture upon the Atlantic coast. It sailed to the coast of Brittany, in the hope of surprising the port of L'Orient, and taking possession of the military stores and ships of the French East India Company, but was able to do but little harm to the enemy .*
France made every exertion not to be outdone in the magnitude of her preparations. The Duke D'Anville, the leader of the enterprise, and a nobleman of high character and courage, soon sailed for the north Atlantic coast, with a fleet consisting of eleven ships of the line, thirty smaller ships and vessels, and transports, with more than three thou- sand land forces on board, who were to meet at Nova Scotia, with sixteen hundred French and Indians from Canada. The fleet and armament sailed from France on the 22d of June. An express was dispatched to Monsieur Conflans, who had been sent to Carthagena, with three ships of the line and a frigate, as a convoy of some trading vessels, or- dered him to join the Duke at Chebucto.t
On account of adverse winds and other causes of delay, the Duke D'Anville, did not pass the Western Islands until the 3d of August. On the 24th of August, while yet three hundred leagues from Nova Scotia, one of his largest ships proved so unseaworthy that he was obliged to commit her to the flames. On the 1st of September, there came on a ter- rible storm, that so deranged the Mars and the Alcide, (both eighty-four gun ships,) that they were compelled to retire to the West Indies. Pestilence aided the winds; and soon after, the Ardent, another sixty-four gun ship, put back into
* Hutchinson.
+ Hutchinson ; Trumbull ; Bancroft, &c.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Brest, on account of an epidemic that prevailed among the crew.
On the 12th of September, the Duke finally reached Chebucto in the ship Northumberland, with only one ship of the line, the Renomme, and three or four transports. A single ship had arrived there before him, and the rest had been scattered, he knew not where, by the fury of the ele- ments. Monsieur Conflans, who had, according to orders, arrived there in August, and had looked in vain, for the fleet had already sailed for France .*
Little did the colonies dream, while they were making such active preparations to invade Canada, that France was fitting out such an armament to overwhelm the whole coast. Therefore, when the fishermen who had fled from Chebucto on the appearance of Conflans, reported at Boston the arriv- al of a French fleet, their story gained little credence. Early in September, however, it was reported at Boston, from a source that could not be questioned, that a large French fleet had sailed for America. Soon after, there were flying rumors that a great fleet had been seen to the west- ward of Newfoundland. Still, it was hoped that this was the English fleet. On the 28th of September, an express boat brought intelligence that it was the French fleet. It was said to consist of fourteen ships of the line, and twenty smaller armed vessels, and that it had on board eight thousand troops. t
Ignorant of the injuries that the Duke D'Anville had sus- tained at sea, and believing that he had come with his entire fleet and armament, the colonies were thrown into consterna- tion by this intelligence. They soon, however, recovered their self-possession and exerted themselves to the utmost to defend the coast. In a few days, more than six thousand of the inland militia were brought into Boston to reinforce the town. As many more were in readiness to go as soon as their presence might be required. Anxiously did the colonies await the coming of the English fleet.
* Hutchinson, ii. 383, 384.
+ Hutchinson, ii. 382.
413
DEATH OF D'ANVILLE AND D'ESTOURNELLE.
[1746.]
The proud Duke D'Anville meanwhile looked with a vain longing for the scattered members of his fleet. After re- maining for four days at Chebucto in a state of intense fever- ish excitement, and finding himself still in the same hopeless condition, he took leave of a world that appeared to have disappointed the hopes that made existence dear to him. Whether he died of apoplexy occasioned by chagrin, or from poison administered by his own hand, was never satisfactori- ly ascertained. He died in the morning, and in the after- noon of the same day, his Vice Admiral, D'Estournelle, with four ships of the line, came into port. His men were feeble and unfit for duty. After he had learned the sudden death of his superior officer, the departure of Conflans, and the loss of some of the best ships belonging to the fleet, he called a council of the officers, and proposed that they should return to France. But Monseiur de la Jonquiere, the Governor of Canada, who was on board, and the next in command, firmly opposed the proposition. Fresh air and wholesome food, he said, would soon recruit the men, and they had still force enough left to reduce Annapolis and Nova Scotia, and that there would be time enough to decide whether they should spend the winter in Canso Bay, or return home. This coun- sel prevailed after a debate of eight hours. Enraged at this rejection of his advice, D'Estournelle was thrown into a malignant fever, and in the delirium occasioned by the mala- dy, he stabbed himself .*
Jonquiere, now chief in command, bent all his energies to carry out the plan that had resulted in the death of the Vice Admiral. The better to recruit his troops, he ordered them to go ashore, where the Acadians and Indians did everything in their power to relieve their sufferings. But dysenteries and fevers swept off hundreds of them. It was estimated that one-third of the Nova Scotia Indians died of the disea- ses communicated by the French troops.
A singular incident defeated the plan of Jonquiere. Gov-
* Belknap, N. Hamp. ii. c., 20; Adams, N. Eng. 210; Hutchinson, ii. 384; Holmes, ii. 30.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
ernor Shirley, in the belief that he had received positive in- telligence of the sailing of the English fleet, sent off an ex- press to inform Admiral Lestock, at Louisbourg, of the state of affairs in America. On the 11th of October, the express- packet was captured by the French and carried into Chebuc- to. Her errand was made known to the French officers, and so alarmed them that it was thought advisable to sail immediately for France, without attempting to strike a blow .*
On the 15th of October, another fearful storm came on, and again the fleet was scattered. Only about one half of the army ever returned, and several of the ships were de- stroyed .; Thus ended in shipwreck and chagrin this haughty attempt upon the British colonies.
The capture of Louisbourg and the discomfiture of the French fleet by our army, that could not be subdued by human enemies, had thus prepared the way for the peace of Aix la Chapelle, that gave England an opportunity to recover from the effects of the rebellion that had now ended in the defeat of the Pretender, and gave her colonies liberty to throw off again the shackles of debts that they had incurred in the war.
Connecticut had been compelled to issue bills of credit to the amount of eighty thousand pounds. It was many years before she could redeem them. The existence of troubles at home, was the alleged cause of the neglect with which the British government treated the colonies at a time when they were threatened with total destruction. Thus robbed in peace, and left to the tender mercies of their enemies in times of danger, the hearts of the colonists were gradually alienated from the mother country.
* Hutchinson, ii. 384, 385.
+ Hutchinson, ii. 385.
CHAPTER XX.
EARLY MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF CONNECTICUT.
IT may be a relief alike to the reader and the author to take a short leave of the more rapid current of historical narrative, and linger awhile where the waters, without los- ing their vitality, sleep tranquilly with the image of bank and tree resting upon their surface. When we read over a detailed account of the stirring events that make up what is ordinarily called history, we are apt to attribute to those events, and to the principal men who participated in them, an importance that does not belong to them. No one man, whatever may be his natural endowments, is so far in advance of his age, as his contemporaries believe him to be. Let us say, rather, that he is the expression, the utter- ance, of that deep, unconscious power that quickens the bosom and animates the features of his generation, as the wind-harp gives out to the ear the rich harmonies that before floated voiceless in the elements. The fibre of silk that you suspend in your window-frame, in the one case, and the hero, the great poet, the lawgiver who discloses new principles of civil polity, in the other, are each the accident that makes audible the musical cadences that are always waiting to be revealed to man. Hence, Shakspeare and Bacon are the voices that express the magnificent era in British history that united so much of the grandeur of the middle ages with the demonstrative, analytical power that was to follow it. Hence, Milton and Cromwell, as unlike each other as men could well be, spoke, shall I not rather say, prophesied-the one of the elevated tone of philosophy, polity, and religion, the other of the revolutionary tendencies of the century that was to build the fabric of society upon a new basis, that at the end of two hundred years still remains unshaken.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
If these remarks are correct, it becomes us to turn our attention not only to the Ludlows, the Winthrops, the Wol- cotts, and the Wyllyses, of Connecticut, but to those men, equally manly and bold, many of whom left homes as com- fortable, though less known to history, and associations as tender as theirs, to accompany them into self-exile and sub- mit to hardships such as are not known to our day, and magnified ten-fold by the dark uncertainties that attended them. Nor should we lose sight of those noble-hearted Eng- lish women, who found in their natures room for the cultiva- tion of the domestic virtues and for the devoutest love of God, who spurned the weaknesses that seem to add to the charms of the sex in times of peace, who met the worst dangers with calmness, and who shed no tears except for others.
In the lives of these fearless men and women who have left no marks to distinguish them beyond the few letters that designate upon the records when they were born, when they were married, and when they died; or beyond the brown slab placed over the spot where long ago their bones crum- bled into the mould-a slab with its rough symbols and "shapeless sculpture"-are we to look for the courage that subdued the forest and its terrible inhabitants, the fortitude that bore up against the heavy burdens of life, the spontane- ous sentiment of liberty that aroused them to resist the aggressions of the French and the insolence of Cornbury and Andross. In raising the monumental stone that is to bear the name of some great hero or statesman, let us look upon the shaft as commemorating not so much the virtues of an individual as of a whole people.
It has been thought by many who have had little opportu- nity or desire to form correct estimates of the people of Connecticut, that they sprung from a low and vulgar parent- age. The want of monuments over the graves of most of them, the humble houses that they dwelt in, the plain cloth- ing that they wore, and strange to tell, the fact that they almost all labored with their hands, have been seized upon as
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FIRST PLANTERS OF CONNECTICUT.
so many marks that they came from the undistinguishable crowd of English peasantry, whose fathers, from age to age, had been the lowest subjects of feudal villeiny. Never was a conclusion more hastily formed, or supported by so few facts. Indeed, all the analogies that are within our reach tend to a contrary result. The early planters of Connecticut were neither serfs nor the sons of serfs. So far from this were many of them, that they could trace their descent backward through the line of the knights and gentlemen of England, by means of the heralds' visitations, parish records, and county genealogies, to say nothing of those family pedigrees that were often transmitted, as heirlooms, from generation to generation, particularly in the line of the eldest sons, to a remote day, and some of them to that wavering horizon where history loses itself in fable. Thus it turns out upon inves- tigation, that many a tomb that holds the dust of some pioneer whose memory is now cherished by a numerous pos- terity, yet cannot be distinguished from the surrounding earth, simply because no monument was placed above it to mark the spot, was entitled from the birth of its tenant, to be gar- nished with a coat of arms among the most honorable of those that swell the volumes of heraldry, with devices to modern republican eyes so quaint and strange .* But what had they, who had spent their lives in waging war with the formularies of the past time that appeared so irksome to them-what had men who made it a part of their education to discard the factitious distinctions of the world,-to do with the gauntleted hand, the helmeted brow, the griffins, the lions, the strawberries and the storks of the herald's college ? The very fact that most of these symbols suggested to the mind the myths of paganism and idolatry, would of itself
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