“What crooks! New France’s future doesn’t look too promising with them at the helm!”
“Especially in view of the Austrian succession, which almost guarantees that France and England will go to war. If that happens, we’ll be fighting in America. Imagine: Port-Royal and Grand’Pré are already under British rule, the Louisbourg fortress is about as solid as a sandcastle, and there are twenty times more English than French in the colonies.”
Joseph had to agree. His thoughts turned to the family he had more or less abandoned in Ruisseau. What would happen to them if war broke out?
The sea was calm that day off Ile Saint-Jean, originally called “Abegweit” by the Mi’kmaq – “land rocked by waves.”
Joseph found Nicolas Gauthier seated on the fore round-house. He looked worried.
“The livestock are dying. If we don’t arrive soon, my trip will have been in vain.”
“We can’t be far from Louisbourg,” Joseph said encouragingly.
“If the winds blow from the north, we’ll be there in a few days… In any case, there’s nothing we can do about it. What are your plans once we’re in Louisbourg?”
“I was told they needed extra hands. So I’ll try my luck.”
“You should sign up as a privateer. If war’s declared, there could be some interesting catches. As early as last summer, the British started trying to intercept supply ships from Acadia, and Le Kinsale, stationed in Canso, managed to capture a Louisbourg ship.”
“I see! In any case, a soldier’s life must be like a form of slavery.”
“I don’t want to discourage you, but they get pretty poor wages and, if they want to earn more, they’re put to work on the fortifications. The officers are in charge of the canteens and liquor. So the soldiers are always in debt. On top of which, they’re poorly fed, often on rotting pork fat rations. As for their clothes, the less said the better; their shirts are made of the cheapest fabric around. Corruption is rampant. The fishermen aren’t any better off. The officers and authorities control the arrival of cargo and fishing gear. The same holds true for merchants, like the Dugas, who own a butcher’s shop. They have to remit part of their profit to the very people who have them in a stranglehold. It’s a sorry life!”
Joseph listened silently, with a sense of shock and concern. He hadn’t come all this way just to turn back now. He had a hard time fathoming the stories of corruption that circulated about the Louisbourg leaders.
“An uprising is what’s needed.”
“A few years ago, the fishermen banded together to send a petition to the minister, to no avail. The soldiers are another matter. I’m afraid that eventually we’re going to see mutiny. Especially since the Swiss soldiers in the Karrer regiment are not attached to France the way the other troops are. There have already been deserters to the English colonies. Following the example of the French Huguenots, the soldiers settle in Boston, Massachusetts, or Virginia.
“I know all about it,” Joseph exclaimed thinking of Gaboury. “We’re losing recruits to the enemy!”
“That’s for sure! As though the enemy weren’t strong enough already.”
* * *
On April 30, 1744, a thick fog shrouded the ship, fog so thick it was impossible to see the fore roundhouse. The ice floes no longer represented a threat, however, and a flock of seagulls circled the ship, a sign that Louisbourg was near. Joseph gave a sigh of relief to think that he would soon be within reach of the fortress at the ends of the earth! On May 1st, when Louisbourg loomed out of the fog, he was dumbstruck. He had never imagined a fortress this big. From the lookout, he gazed at the star-shaped city built on Havre d’anglois and surrounded by ramparts within which more than seven thousand people lived. Soldiers, fishermen, and every other trade as well: carpenters, joiners, limemen, masons, stonecarvers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, bakers… just as in France’s cities by the sea. Outside the ramparts was the fishing village: huts with sod roofs and, nearby, small boats, storehouses, and fish flakes on which the cod was dried. The smell of fish mingled in the air with smoke from the drydock where pitch was being boiled to repair the ships with. The bay, eight fathoms deep, was in the shape of a flattened bottle, and it harboured some sixty ships of various sizes. A forest of masts!
“Louisbourg is at the same time a fortress, a cod fishing post, and a huge trading post where France, Quebec, the West Indies, and New England exchange merchandise,” Gauthier explained. “Its also a hideout for privateers and smugglers! Funny, I dont see any French or Basque fishing fleets. Boats from La Rochelle, Marennes, Saint-Malo, San Juan de Luz, and Sables d’Olonne are usually here earlier than this… I wonder if war has been declared in Europe.”
The docks were crawling with a mottled group of people engaged in a frenzied exchange of merchandise – barrels of pork fat, sacks of grain, hundredweights of dried peas, baskets of cheese from Quebec.
“Its more animated than Quebec’s harbour,” Joseph observed.
Gauthier was busy pointing, explaining, and telling stories. “Look, another ship from Quebec. The barrels on the bridge must be full of cured salmon… The other French ship over there comes from the West Indies with a cargo of rum, sugar, and tobacco. Goodbye food shortages!”
“What about the ships flying a British flag?”
“They come from New England. Boston, New York. A potential market if we play our cards right.”
Joseph looked at the fortress and the Château Saint-Louis, the governor s residence with its magnificent roof made of slate imported from Nantes. In the very centre of the castle, between the governor’s suites and the barracks, stood the clock tower. As the clock chimed eleven o’clock that morning, costumed Mi’kmaq paddled their canoes alongside the Licorne. The commotion grew as the ship drew alongside the dock. Cannon shots boomed. The firepower was such that the whole fortress shook. A troop of soldiers waited on the docks. Joseph disembarked. The flagstones seemed to reel before him, just like the colourful, noisy, variegated crowd. The navy’s drummers formed an honour guard, proudly wearing their red and blue uniforms – jackets, waistcoats, and breeches – and beating on their blue drums decorated with yellow fleurs-de-lys. He also recognized the soldiers of the navy’s Compagnies Franches with their grey-white uniform and blue trim, white jackets and socks, swords on their hip, Tulle musket with its bayonet attached and powder horn attached to the thirty-charge cartridge box.
“See the Swiss soldiers,” Gauthier said pointing them out, “they’re the ones wearing a red jacket with blue sleeves and white buttons. The authorities don’t like them much because most of them aren’t Catholic, and they only obey French sergeants grudgingly.”
“What about the French soldiers?”
“The situation there isn’t much better. Several of them are pretty sickly… They include habitual criminals and orphans recruited from Paris. If war breaks out, sign up as a privateer… It’s more exciting.”
Joseph was engrossed in the spectacle when a few Mi’kmaq and Abnaki joined the troops. On the square, all kinds of languages could be heard in a genuine tower of Babel! The Boston accent, the accent of the settlers come to trade farm products for rum and sugar, the strange speech of the Portuguese fishermen, the accents of tanned fishermen back from fishing off Martinique, or of fishermen used to the cold of the Baye des Chaleurs, or of Acadians from Port-Royal. There were Puritan merchants from Massachusetts, who covered their ears so as not to hear the French captains swearing. More exotic still: Brazilian parrots, African monkeys, and black slaves from the Caribbean. A carousel of colours and sounds, with cannons spewing fire, and a city abustle.
Chapter 10
Further to complaints that a few individuals