A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

102 LOUISBOURG BESIEGED. [1745.Several were ready for use the next morning, andimmediately opened on thetown, — which, writes asoldier in his diary, " damaged the houses and madethe women cry." "The enemy," says the Habitantde Zouishoiirg," saluted us with our own cannon, andmade a terrific fire, smashing everything within range."The English occupation of the Grand Battery maybe called the decisive event of the siege. Thereseems no doubt that the French could have avertedthe disaster long enough to make it of little help tothe invaders. The water-front of the battery wasimpregnable. The rear defences consisted of a loopholedwall of masonr}^, with a ditch ten feet deep andtwelve feet wide, and also a covered way and glacis,which General Wolcott describes as unfinished. Inthis he mistook. They were not unfinished, but hadbeen partly demolished, with a view to reconstruction.The rear wall was flanked by two towers,which, says Duchambon, were demolished ; but GeneralWolcott declares that swivels were still mountedon them,i and he adds that "two hundred men mighthold the battery against five thousand without cannon."The English landed their cannon near FlatPoint ;and before they could be turned against theGrand Battery, they must be dragged four miles overhills and rocks, through spongy marshes and junglesnon were differently rated in the French and English navies of theseventeenth century, and that a French thirty-six carried a ball aslarge as an English forty-two, or even a little larger.1 Journal of Major-General Wolcott.