As every student of American history knows, the final war between
Britain and France over control of North America erupted in the upper Ohio valley,
where the French established posts to hem in the British colonies
along the Atlantic seaboard. Robert Dinwiddie, the royal
governor of Virginia, which claimed the western region, sent a young
militia officer named George Washington to the forks of the Ohio in the spring of 1754 to drive the French away. In the
opening round of the new war, Washington ambushed a small French
force in western Pennsylvania, killed the French commander, who
just happened to be a younger brother of the now-deceased
Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers, hero of Grand-Pré, and built
Fort Necessity nearby as a base for further operations. Before
Washington could attack Fort Duquesne at present-day Pittsburgh, the
French surrounded Necessity, captured Washington's entire force, and
sent the young colonel and his militiamen trudging back to Virginia.
The British retaliated the following year by sending a column of
regulars under General Edward Braddock to obliterate the French
presence in the Ohio country. Again, using their Indian allies
to good effect, the French
ambushed the British column, mortally wounded Braddock, and
compelled Washington and the redcoat survivors to fall back to
Virginia. What had started as a dispute over frontier territory gave every promise of erupting into
another trans-Atlantic conflict, and so it did.01a
But there was more to the war's beginning than that. Sadly,
the Acadians of peninsula Nova Scotia, some of them eagerly, more of
them reluctantly, played an important part in the coming of the last French and
Indian War.
After 1749, the French were quick to
respond to British creation of a new power center facing Louisbourg,
and especially to the importation of hundreds of Protestants to
populate the area around Halifax in Nova Scotia. The authorities at Québec
and Louisbourg were determined to coax the Acadians and the Indians
into joining their effort not only to resist British encroachment
but also to regain what they had lost in 1710. Acadian
hotheads like Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil of
Petitcoudiac and Joseph LeBlanc dit Le Maigre of Minas,
who had actively opposed the British during King George's War,
were eager to fight the British once again. Most Acadians,
however, expressed their usual reluctance to abandon neutrality.
The Mi'kmaq, on the other
hand, were eager to take up the tomahawk against the redcoat interlopers.
Historian Naomi Griffiths explains: "For their own
reasons, the Mi'kmaq responded favourably to the proposals of the
French. Although they were encouraged in their hostility to
the British by the French, it was the British intrusion into land
that the Mi'kmaq considered their own territory, particularly in the
region of Halifax, that was the real basis for the disputes between
them and Cornwallis. ... [T]hroughout the years of the
European exploration and settlement of Acadia, the Mi'kmaq never
ceased to consider themselves the rightful tenants of the land.
Further, the Mi'kmaq were not so much allies of the French in the
1750s as they were a people convinced of their own autonomy, who
were taking all means within their power to ensure their continued
independence. Their use of land might not have given them the
type of territorial imperative that European politics had inculcated
in the inhabitants of that continent, but the very importance that
the Europeans attached to land ownership had taught the Mi'kmaq a
great deal. The Mi'kmaq had long-established gathering places,
some of which were inhabited year-round, on the sites which the
British were now attempting to build. After 1748, British
settlement seemed to pose a much greater threat to Mi'kmaq control
over their lives than possible French expansion. On 24
September 1749," only three months after Cornwallis had arrived at
Halifax, "the Mi'kmaq formally declared their hostility to the
British plans for settlement without more formal negotiations."01
The closest Mi'kmaq
presence to the new British capital was Ste.-Anne at Shubenacadie, the Catholic
mission south of Cobeguit. Head of the mission in 1749 was a
man who would become one of the most controversial figures in Acadian
history.
Abbé Jean-Louis Le Loutre
arrived at Shubenacadie in 1738 and soon established influence not
only with the Mi'kmaq but also with many Acadians in the regions.
At first he understood and respected Acadian neutrality, but
that soon changed.
Two months after news of a war declaration in Europe
had reached
Louisbourg, Le Loutre led the first attack on Annapolis Royal, in
July 1744. When a French force from Louisbourg attacked
Annapolis Royal for a second time the following September, Le
Loutre, though he still was in the colony, did not participate in
the operation. After the fall of Louisbourg in June 1745,
authorities at Québec turned to Le Loutre to organize and maintain a
force of Mi'kmaq on the peninsula to co-operate with future French
operations there. As a result, the British placed a 100-livre
bounty on
his head. In the summer of 1746, the abbé, from his post at
Chebouctou Bay on the Atlantic side of the peninsula, urged yet
another attack on Annapolis Royal, but this operation also failed.
Le Loutre then returned to France, probably to report to his
superiors in Paris. He attempted to return to his mission
later in the war, but the British captured and held him twice.
Not until 1749, the war having ended, did they allow him to return
to Nova Scotia.01c
The British would soon
realize their mistake.
Le Loutre arrived at
Louisbourg in late June 1749--only a week after
Cornwallis's flotilla had appeared at Chebouctou down the coast.
Having crossed from Rochefort with Charles Des Herbiers de La Ralière,
the new governor of Île Royale and Île St.-Jean, the abbé and the
governor no doubt had discussed the role of Le Loutre and his
Mi'kmaq, and well as of the Acadians, in French plans to overawe the
British in the region. Back at Shubenacadie, Le Loutre, now
more than ever a military leader, could see for himself how
perilously close was his mission to the new British stronghold at
Halifax. Just north of him stood the Acadian settlement of
Cobeguit, as yet unfortified, but he could not know how long
Cornwallis would wait before stationing a garrison there.
Such a move would isolate Shubenacadie and render it useless as a
military base. The abbé had no choice but to abandon the
mission and move his Mi'kmaq closer to the lines of communication
with Louisbourg and Québec. In late 1749, he transferred his
base of operations from Shubenacadie to Pointe-à-Beauséjour, on the
west side of the Missaguash at Chignecto. The new camp at
Beauséjour stood three times as far from Halifax as the old mission
at Shubenacadie. However, a base at
Chignecto possessed easy access to Baie Verte with its seaborne communication with Louisbourg and Québec.
Chignecto's location at the northwestern end of the Bay of Fundy and
its proximity to an inland line of communication with Québec via
Rivière St.-Jean not only would open up more points of attack for
his Mi'kmaq raiders but also protect their flanks and rear.
Around, in front, and behind Le Loutre and his Mi'kmaq were the rich fields and pastures of the Acadians at
Chignecto and trois-rivières. On the upper Petitcoudiac, he
visited the homes of Acadian partisans, including the Beausoleil Broussards,
men who harbored no illusions about neutrality in the struggle with
Britain, who had
grown up among the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet and could be just as deadly
with tomahawk and knife.01b
Although peace had
come--again--in April 1748, the abbé and his Mi'kmaq would have none
of it. In September 1749, Mi'kmaq elders had issued a
proclamation protesting the British occupation of Chebouctou, one of
the main Mi'kmaq gathering places on the peninsula. The
proclamation, written in French and Mi'kmaq by Abbé Maillard,
asserted Mi'kmaq independence so forcefully that, in early October,
Cornwallis issued a proclamation of his own in which he instructed
all British subjects in the colony "to Annoy, distress, take or
destroy the Savages commonly called Micmacks, wherever they are
found." The governor then offered a 10-guinea bounty for
Mi'kmaq scalps! Cornwallis was aware, also, of Le Loutre's
part in stirring the Indians "to begin hostilities." It was
then that Cornwallis dispatched troops to Rivière Gaspereau and
Pigiguit to build new fortifications among the Minas Acadians.
Cornwallis also ordered that a road be cut from Halifax to Minas so
that he could reinforce the new garrisons there. Le Loutre and
his Mi'kmaq saw this as a declaration of war, which prompted their
move from Shubenacadie.02
And then there were the
Acadians and their annoying refusal to join the struggle against the
British. Le Loutre had not been around when Canadians, Indians, and
Acadian partisans had won a bloody victory over the New Englanders
at Grand-Pré in February 1747, but, along with the French
authorities at Québec and Louisbourg, he was certain of the result:
"... the victory at Grand-Pré had made the Acadians once more
subjects of France." There would be no more Acadian
"neutrality." It was time for them to acknowledge that they
were, and always had been, Frenchmen, that their true and
everlasting allegiance was to their motherland France, not to
Britain.03
Prompted by Mi'kmaq
threats (that is to say, by Abbé Le Loutre), a dozen Minas Acadians
attacked British troops at Rivière Gaspereau in December 1749.
The redcoats easily deflected the ambush. Acadian leaders,
especially Honoré Gautrot of Cobeguit, helped the British
commander at Annapolis Royal compile a list of 11 of the Minas
miscreants, but Governor Cornwallis and his staff were not assuaged
by Acadian assistance in the matter. They were especially
alarmed by Le Loutre's move to Chignecto, but their response had to
wait until the weather improved.04
Cornwallis made his move
at Chignecto the following spring. In late April 1750, Major
Charles Lawrence reached the head of the basin below Beaubassin with a small flotilla
of transports. Aboard were 400 redcoats, including field
artillery, ready to do battle. Lawrence's orders were to
destroy any fort that the French had erected at the isthmus and to
construct a palisade of his own from which he would assert British
authority in the area. As his boats approached the landing at
Beaubassin, the major was dismayed to see the lower village in
flames. Legend insists that the abbé himself set fire to the
village church and assisted his Mi'kmaq in torching the houses and
barns so that the approaching British could not use the place.
Le Loutre's Mi'kmaq were
not the only armed force to meet Lawrence and his redcoats.
Captain Louis de La Corne, who had defeated the New Englanders at Grand-Pré three years
earlier and wore a Cross of St.-Louis to show for it, had been at Chignecto since the previous November to
secure oaths of allegiance from habitants already living in
the area and from those who came into French territory from other
Acadian settlements. La Corne also had been tasked with
organizing the Acadian partisans of the trois-rivières and building
whatever fortifications were needed there. He then moved to
the Beauséjour ridge with his Canadians and Acadians
and encouraged the newly-arrived Abbé Le Loutre and his Mi'kmaq to
coax Chignecto settlers still living east of the Missaguash to remove
themselves to the French-secured areas west of the river.05
Apprised of the approach
of Lawrence and his redcoats, La Corne met the major at the
Beaubassin landing, the lower village still smoldering behind him.
Lawrence had expected resistance at the landing.
Cornwallis had instructed him, if he should meet La Corne, to order
him back to Canada, or he would be "treated as an Incendiary"
(strangely prophetic words). Lawrence asked why La Corne was
there with a force of Canadians in British territory. La Corne
replied that he was under orders from his governor-general to take
possession of the settlements in the region until a commission could
decide the exact boundaries between the two powers. Whether it
was La Corne's words or the tone in which he delivered them,
Lawrence lost his temper and demanded to see the Canadian's orders.
La Corne ignored the demand. Lawrence asked where were the
Acadian deputies from the area and why were they not there to meet
with him. La Corne informed the major that many of the Acadians in
the area had
come over to the French and that there were no more deputies among
them. He added that the Indians, not he and his men, had
burned Beaubassin. The sharp-eyed Lawrence could
see that he did not have force enough to overawe La Corne and Le
Loutre, so he wisely broke off the tête-à-tête
and retreated to Minas.
There, at Beaubassin, not
on the frontier of western Pennsylvania, began the final
confrontation between Britain and France over control of North
America. La Corne occupied
the Beauséjour ridge west of the Missaguash, with Le Loutre and his
Mi'kmaq encamped behind him. Lawrence, now a lieutenant
colonel, returned to Beaubassin
the following September with a force nearly twice as large as the
one he had brought in April. La Corne and his Canadians did
not resist him, but Le Loutre's Mi'kmaq and Acadian militia led by Beausoleil
Broussard put up a spirited fight before
retreating back across the swollen Missaguash. Having secured the
landing site, Lawrence ordered the construction of a
log palisade--Fort Lawrence--on the ashes of Beaubassin village. The following spring, a Canadian force under
Claude-Antoine de Bermen de La Martinière began construction of a
fort of their own atop the ridge west of the Missaguash, aptly named
Fort Beauséjour. The Canadians also constructed a second fort,
called Gaspereau, near Baie Verte.06
Britain and France had
their "boundary" at last.
And so the Acadians at Chignecto were the first to endure a
lasting disruption of their lives. Before Lawrence's return to Beaubassin and
his construction of a fort there, La Corne, determined to deny the
British any subsistence from the area, ordered
the evacuation of the hundreds of Acadians
still living east of the Missaguash. They, too, were compelled to take an oath
of allegiance to France and were used as unpaid labor in constructing the Chignecto forts. After Lawrence's return, the Canadians, Mi'kmaq,
and Acadian partisans, under the direction of La Corne and Le
Loutre, burned the farms south and east of Fort Lawrence,
including crops not yet harvested, so that there would be nothing left
for the Acadians to return to and nothing in the area to sustain the British
garrison. Soon the area east of the Missaguash was a smoking wasteland. Menoudy, Maccan, Nappan,
Rivière-des-Hébert, La Planche,
Beaubassin--communities that had stood for half a century were no more.
In October, six or seven hundred Acadians from the area, "in
pitiable condition," crossed the Mere-Rouge to Île St.-Jean.
More followed in 1751, so that by 1752 a total of 1,188 Acadians
from mainland villages, most of them refugees from Chignecto, had
resettled on Île St.-Jean.
Many of the Chignecto Acadians remained in the crowded
settlements west of the Missaguash or moved on to the trois-rivières
settlements. Something the British feared, and the French had
long encouraged, finally was coming to pass: hundreds of
Acadians, most of whom had considered themselves neutral in the
struggle between the imperial rivals, now were living in
French-controlled territory, driven there by two of their greatest
fears, the threat of "a general massacre by savages...'" or the
imposition of an unqualified oath of allegiance that would force
them to fight against their fellow Frenchmen. The ranks of the
Acadian partisans swelled with new recruits, while neutralists in
the area became few and far between.07
Only two years after the conclusion of the previous conflict, the final French and Indian War had come to Acadia.10