CHAPTER 9
1712-1749. 

LOUISBOURG AND ACADIA. 
PEACE OF UTRECHT,  PERILOUS QUESTIONS,  LOUISBOURG FOUNDED,  ANNAPOLIS ATTACKED,  POSITION OF THE ACADIANS,  WEAKNESS OF THE BRITISH GARRISON,  APATHY OF THE MINISTRY,  FRENCH INTRIGUE,  CLERICAL POLITICIANS,  THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE,  ACADIANS REFUSE IT: THEIR EXPULSION PROPOSED; THEY TAKE THE OATH. 

The great European war was drawing to an end, and with it the American war, which was but its echo.  An avalanche of defeat and disaster had fallen upon the old age of Louis XIV. , and France was burdened with an insupportable load of debt.  The political changes in England came to her relief.  Fifty years later, when the elder Pitt went out of office and Bute came in, France had cause to be grateful; for the peace of 1763 was far more favorable to her than it would have been under the imperious war minister.  It was the same in 1712.  The Whigs who had fallen from power would have wrung every advantage from France; the triumphant Tories were eager to close with her on any terms not so easy as to excite popular indignation.  The result was the Treaty of Utrecht, which satisfied none of the allies of England, and gave to France conditions more favorable than she had herself proposed two years before.  The fall of Godolphin and the disgrace of Marlborough were a godsend to her. 

Yet in America Louis XIV.  made important concessions.  The Five Nations of the Iroquois were acknowledged to be British subjects; and this became in future the preposterous foundation for vast territorial claims of England.  Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia, "according to its ancient limits," were also given over by France to her successful rival; though the King parted from Acadia with a reluctance shown by the great offers he made for permission to retain it. 

But while the Treaty of Utrecht seemed to yield so much, and yielded so much in fact, it staved off the settlement of questions absolutely necessary for future peace.  The limits of Acadia, the boundary line between Canada and the British colonies, and the boundary between those colonies and the great western wilderness claimed by France, were all left unsettled, since the attempt to settle them would have rekindled the war.  The peace left the embers of war still smouldering, sure, when the time should come, to burst into flame.  The next thirty years were years of chronic, smothered war, disguised, but never quite at rest.  The standing subjects of dispute were three, very different in importance.  First, the question of Acadia: whether the treaty gave England a vast country, or only a strip of seacoast.  Next, that of northern New England and the Abenaki Indians, many of whom French policy still left within the borders of Maine, and whom both powers claimed as subjects or allies.  Last and greatest was the question whether France or England should hold the valleys of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and with them the virtual control of the continent.  This was the triple problem that tormented the northern English colonies for more than a generation, till it found a solution at last in the Seven Years' War. 

Louis XIV.  had deeply at heart the recovery of Acadia.  Yet the old and infirm King, whose sun was setting in clouds after half a century of unrivalled splendor, felt that peace was a controlling necessity, and he wrote as follows to his plenipotentiaries at Utrecht: "It is so important to prevent the breaking off of the negotiations that the King will give up both Acadia and Cape Breton, if necessary for peace; but the plenipotentiaries will yield this point only in the last extremity, for by this double cession Canada will become useless, the access to it will be closed, the fisheries will come to an end, and the French marine be utterly destroyed. " And he adds that if the English will restore Acadia, he, the King, will give them, not only Saint  Christopher, but also the islands of Saint  Martin and Saint  Bartholomew. 

The plenipotentiaries replied that the offer was refused, and that the best they could do without endangering the peace was to bargain that Cape Breton should belong to France.  On this, the King bid higher still for the coveted province, and promised that if Acadia were returned to him, the fortifications of Placentia should be given up untouched, the cannon in the forts of Hudson Bay abandoned to the English, and the Newfoundland fisheries debarred to Frenchmen, a remarkable concession; for France had fished on the banks of Newfoundland for two centuries, and they were invaluable to her as a nursery of sailors.  Even these offers were rejected, and England would not resign Acadia. 

Cape Breton was left to the French.  This large island, henceforth called by its owners Isle Royale, lies east of Acadia, and is separated from it only by the narrow Strait of Canseau.  From its position, it commands the chief entrance of the gulf and river of Saint  Lawrence.  Some years before, the intendant Raudot had sent to the court an able paper, in which he urged its occupation and settlement, chiefly on commercial and industrial grounds.  The war was then at its height; the plan was not carried into effect, and Isle Royale was still a wilderness.  It was now proposed to occupy it for military and political reasons.  One of its many harbors, well fortified and garrisoned, would guard the approaches of Canada, and in the next war furnish a base for attacking New England and recovering Acadia. 

After some hesitation the harbor called Port à l'Anglois was chosen for the proposed establishment, to which the name of Louisbourg was given, in honor of the King.  It lies near the southeastern point of the island, where an opening in the ironbound coast, at once easily accessible and easily defended, gives entrance to a deep and sheltered basin, where a fleet of war-ships may find good anchorage.  The proposed fortress was to be placed on the tongue of land that lies between this basin and the sea.  The place, well chosen from the point of view of the soldier or the fisherman, was unfit for an agricultural colony, its surroundings being barren hills studded with spruce and fir, and broad marshes buried in moss. 

In spite of the losses and humiliations of the war, great expectations were formed from the new scheme.  Several years earlier, when the proposals of Raudot were before the Marine Council, it was confidently declared that a strong fortress on Cape Breton would make the King master of North America.  The details of the establishment were settled in advance.  The King was to build the fortifications, supply them with cannon, send out eight companies of soldiers, besides all the usual officers of government, establish a well-endowed hospital, conducted by nuns, as at Quebec, provide Jesuits and Récollets as chaplains, besides Filles de la Congrégation to teach girls, send families to the spot, support them for two years, and furnish a good number of young women to marry the soldiers. 

This plan, or something much like it, was carried into effect.  Louisbourg was purely and solely the offspring of the Crown and its ally, the Church.  In time it grew into a compact fishing town of about four thousand inhabitants, with a strong garrison and a circuit of formidable ramparts and batteries.  It became by far the strongest fortress on the Atlantic coast, and so famous as a resort of privateers that it was known as the Dunquerque of America. 

What concerns us now is its weak and troubled infancy.  It was to be peopled in good part from the two lost provinces of Acadia and Newfoundland, whose inhabitants were to be transported to Louisbourg or other parts of Isle Royale, which would thus be made at once and at the least possible cost a dangerous neighbor to the newly acquired possessions of England.  The Micmacs of Acadia, and even some of the Abenakis, were to be included in this scheme of immigration. 

In the autumn, the commandant of Plaisance, or Placentia,—the French stronghold in Newfoundland,—received the following mandate from the King:

MONSIEUR DE COSTEBELLE,—I have caused my orders to be given you to evacuate the town and forts of Plaisance and the other places of your government of Newfoundland, ceded to my dear sister the Queen of Great Britain.  I have given my orders for the equipment of the vessels necessary to make the evacuation and transport you, with the officers, garrison, and inhabitants of Plaisance and other places of Newfoundland, to my Isle Royale, vulgarly called Cape Breton; but as the season is so far advanced that this cannot be done without exposing my troops and my subjects to perishing from cold and misery, and placing my vessels in evident peril of wreck, I have judged it proper to defer the transportation till the next spring.  

The inhabitants of Placentia consisted only of twenty-five or thirty poor fishermen, with their families, and some of them would gladly have become English subjects and stayed where they were; but no choice was given them.  "Nothing," writes Costebelle, "can cure them of the error, to which they obstinately cling, that they are free to stay or go, as best suits their interest. " They and their fishing-boats were in due time transported to Isle Royale, where for a while their sufferings were extreme. 

Attempts were made to induce the Indians of Acadia to move to the new colony; but they refused, and to compel them was out of the question.  But by far the most desirable accession to the establishment of Isle Royale would be that of the Acadian French, who were too numerous to be transported in the summary manner practised in the case of the fishermen of Placentia.  It was necessary to persuade rather than compel them to migrate, and to this end great reliance was placed on their priests, especially Fathers Pain and Dominique.  Ponchartrain himself wrote to the former on the subject.  The priest declares that he read the letter to his flock, who answered that they wished to stay in Acadia; and he adds that the other Acadians were of the same mind, being unwilling to leave their rich farms and risk starvation on a wild and barren island.  "Nevertheless," he concludes, "we shall fulfil the intentions of his Majesty by often holding before their eyes that religion for which they ought to make every sacrifice. " He and his brother priests kept their word.  Freedom of worship was pledged on certain conditions to the Acadians by the Treaty of Utrecht, and no attempt was ever made to deprive them of it; yet the continual declaration of their missionaries that their souls were in danger under English rule was the strongest spur to impel them to migrate. 

The condition of the English in Acadia since it fell into their hands had been a critical one.  Port Royal, thenceforth called Annapolis Royal, or simply Annapolis, had been left, as before mentioned, in charge of Colonel Vetch, with a heterogeneous garrison of four hundred and fifty men.  The Acadians of the banlieue—a term defined as covering a space of three miles round the fort—had been included in the capitulation, and had taken an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, binding so long as they remained in the province.  Some of them worked, for the garrison and helped to repair the fort, which was in a ruinous condition.  Meanwhile the Micmac Indians remained fiercely hostile to the English; and in June, 1711, aided by a band of Penobscots, they ambuscaded and killed or captured nearly seventy of them.  This completely changed the attitude of the Acadians.  They broke their oath, rose against their new masters, and with their Indian friends, invested the fort to the number of five or six hundred.  Disease, desertion, and the ambuscade had reduced the garrison to about two hundred effective men, and the defences of the place were still in bad condition.  The assailants, on the other hand, had no better leader than the priest, Gaulin, missionary of the Micmacs and prime mover in the rising.  He presently sailed for Placentia to beg for munitions and a commander; but his errand failed, the siege came to nought, and the besiegers dispersed.  Vaudreuil, from whom the Acadians had begged help, was about to send it when news of the approach of Walker's fleet forced him to keep all his strength for his own defence. 

From this time to the end of the war, the chief difficulties of the governor of Acadia rose, not from the enemy, but from the British authorities at home.  For more than two years he, with his starved and tattered garrison, were treated with absolute neglect.  He received no orders, instructions, or money.  Acadia seemed forgotten by the ministry, till Vetch heard at last that Nicholson was appointed to succeed him. 

Now followed the Treaty of Utrecht, the cession of Acadia to England, and the attempt on the part of France to induce the Acadians to remove to Isle Royale.  Some of the English officials had once been of opinion that this French Catholic population should be transported to Martinique or some other distant French colony, and its place supplied by Protestant families sent from England or Ireland.  Since the English Revolution, Protestantism was bound up with the new political order, and Catholicism with the old.  No Catholic could favor the Protestant succession, and hence politics were inseparable from creed.  Vetch, who came of a race of hot and stubborn Covenanters, had been one of the most earnest for replacing the Catholic Acadians by Protestants; but after the peace he and others changed their minds.  No Protestant colonists appeared, nor was there the smallest sign that the government would give itself the trouble to attract any.  It was certain that if the Acadians removed at all, they would go, not to Martinique or any other distant colony, but to the new military establishment of Isle Royale, which would thus become a strong and dangerous neighbor to the feeble British post of Annapolis.  Moreover, the labor of the French inhabitants was useful and sometimes necessary to the English garrison, which depended mainly on them for provisions; and if they left the province, they would leave it a desert, with the prospect of long remaining so. 

Hence it happened that the English were for a time almost as anxious to keep the Acadians in Acadia as they were forty years later to get them out of it; nor had the Acadians themselves any inclination to leave their homes.  But the French authorities needed them at Isle Royale, and made every effort to draw them thither.  By the fourteenth article of the Treaty of Utrecht such of them as might choose to leave Acadia were free to do so within the space of a year, carrying with them their personal effects; while a letter of Queen Anne, addressed to Nicholson, then governor of Acadia, permitted the emigrants to sell their lands and houses. 

The missionary Félix Pain had reported, as we have seen, that they were, in general, disposed to remain where they were; on which Costebelle, who now commanded at Louisbourg, sent two officers, La Ronde Denys and Pensens, with instructions to set the priests at work to persuade their flocks to move.  La Ronde Denys and his colleague repaired to Annapolis, where they promised the inhabitants vessels for their removal, provisions for a year, and freedom from all taxation for ten years.  Then, having been well prepared in advance, the heads of families were formed in a circle, and in presence of the English governor, the two French officers, and the priests Justinien, Bonaventure, and Gaulin, they all signed, chiefly with crosses, a paper to the effect that they would live and die subjects of the King of France.  A few embarked at once for Isle Royale in the vessel "Marie-Joseph," and the rest were to follow within the year. 

This result was due partly to the promises of La Ronde Denys, and still more to a pastoral letter from the Bishop of Quebec, supporting the assurances of the missionaries that the heretics would rob them of the ministrations of the Church.  This was not all.  The Acadians about Annapolis had been alienated by the conduct of the English authorities, which was not conciliating, and on the part of the governor was sometimes outrageous.  Yet those of the banlieue had no right to complain, since they had made themselves liable to the penalties of treason by first taking an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, and then breaking it by trying to seize her fort. 

Governor Nicholson, like his predecessor, was resolved to keep the Acadians in the province if he could.  This personage, able, energetic, perverse, headstrong, and unscrupulous, conducted himself, even towards the English officers and soldiers, in a manner that seems unaccountable, and that kindled their utmost indignation.  Towards the Acadians his behavior was still worse.  As Costebelle did not keep his promise to send vessels to bring them to Isle Royale, they built small ones for themselves, and the French authorities at Louisbourg sent them the necessary rigging.  Nicholson ordered it back, forbade the sale of their lands and houses,—a needless stretch of power, as there was nobody to buy,—and would not let them sell even their personal effects, coolly setting at nought both the Treaty of Utrecht and the letter of the Queen. 

Nicholson was but a short time at Annapolis, leaving the government, during most of his term, to his deputies, Caulfield and afterwards Doucette, both of whom roundly denounce their principal for his general conduct; while both, in one degree or another, followed his example in preventing so far as they could the emigration of the Acadians.  Some of them, however, got away, and twelve or fifteen families who settled at Port Toulouse, on Isle Royale, were near perishing from cold and hunger. 

From Annapolis the French agents, La Ronde Denys and Pensens, proceeded to the settlements about Chignecto and the Basin of Mines,—the most populous and prosperous parts of Acadia.  Here they were less successful than before.  The people were doubtful and vacillating,—ready enough to promise, but slow to perform.  While declaring with perfect sincerity their devotion to "our invincible monarch," as they called King Louis, who had just been compelled to surrender their country, they clung tenaciously to the abodes of their fathers.  If they had wished to emigrate, the English governor had no power to stop them.  From Baye Verte, on the isthmus, they had frequent and easy communication with the French at Louisbourg, which the English did not and could not interrupt.  They were armed, and they far outnumbered the English garrison; while at a word they could bring to their aid the Micmac warriors, who had been taught to detest the English heretics as foes of God and man.  To say that they wished to leave Acadia, but were prevented from doing so by a petty garrison at the other end of the province, so feeble that it could hardly hold Annapolis itself, is an unjust reproach upon a people who, though ignorant and weak of purpose, were not wanting in physical courage.  The truth is that from this time to their forced expatriation in 1755, all the Acadians, except those of Annapolis and its immediate neighborhood, were free to go or stay at will.  Those of the eastern parts of the province especially, who formed the greater part of the population, were completely their own masters.  This was well known to the French authorities.  The governor of Louisbourg complains of the apathy of the Acadians.  Saint-Ovide declares that they do not want to fulfil the intentions of the King and remove to Isle Royale.  Costebelle makes the same complaint; and again, after three years of vain attempts to overcome their reluctance, he writes that every effort has failed to induce them to migrate. 

From this time forward the state of affairs in Acadia was a peculiar one.  By the Treaty of Utrecht it was a British province, and the nominal sovereignty resided at Annapolis, in the keeping of the miserable little fort and the puny garrison, which as late as 1743 consisted of but five companies, counting, when the ranks were full, thirty-one men each.  More troops were often asked for, and once or twice were promised; but they were never sent.  "This has been hitherto no more than a mock government, its authority never yet having extended beyond cannon-shot of the fort," wrote Governor Philipps in 1720.  "It would be more for the honour of the Crown, and profit also, to give back the country to the French, than to be contented with the name only of government. " Philipps repaired the fort, which, as the engineer Mascarene says, "had lain tumbling down" before his arrival; but Annapolis and the whole province remained totally neglected and almost forgotten by England till the middle of the century.  At one time the soldiers were in so ragged a plight that Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong was forced to clothe them at his own expense. 

While this seat of British sovereignty remained in unchanging feebleness for more than forty years, the French Acadians were multiplying apace.  Before 1749 they were the only white inhabitants of the province, except ten or twelve English families who, about the year 1720, lived under the guns of Annapolis.  At the time of the cession the French population seems not to have exceeded two thousand souls, about five hundred of whom lived within the banlieue of Annapolis, and were therefore more or less under English control.  They were all alike a simple and ignorant peasantry, prosperous in their humble way, and happy when rival masters ceased from troubling, though vexed with incessant quarrels among themselves, arising from the unsettled boundaries of their lands, which had never been properly surveyed.  Their mental horizon was of the narrowest, their wants were few, no military service was asked of them by the English authorities, and they paid no taxes to the government.  They could even indulge their strong appetite for litigation free of cost; for when, as often happened, they brought their land disputes before the Council at Annapolis, the cases were settled and the litigants paid no fees.  Their communication with the English officials was carried on through deputies chosen by themselves, and often as ignorant as their constituents, for a remarkable equality prevailed through this primitive little society. 

Except the standing garrison at Annapolis, Acadia was as completely let alone by the British government as Rhode Island or Connecticut.  Unfortunately, the traditional British policy of inaction towards her colonies was not applicable in the case of a newly conquered province with a disaffected population and active, enterprising, and martial neighbors bent on recovering what they had lost.  Yet it might be supposed that a neglect so invigorating in other cases might have developed among the Acadians habits of self-reliance and faculties of self-care.  The reverse took place; for if England neglected Acadia, France did not; and though she had renounced her title to it, she still did her best to master it and make it hers again.  The chief instrument of her aggressive policy was the governor of Isle Royale, whose station was the fortress of Louisbourg, and who was charged with the management of Acadian affairs.  At all the Acadian settlements he had zealous and efficient agents in the missionary priests, who were sent into the province by the Bishop of Quebec, or in a few cases by their immediate ecclesiastical superiors in Isle Royale. 

The Treaty of Utrecht secured freedom of worship to the Acadians under certain conditions.  These were that they should accept the sovereignty of the British Crown, and that they and their pastors should keep within the limits of British law.  Even supposing that by swearing allegiance to Queen Anne the Acadians had acquired the freedom of worship which the treaty gave them on condition of their becoming British subjects, it would have been an abuse of this freedom to use it for subverting the power that had granted it.  Yet this is what the missionaries did.  They were not only priests of the Roman Church, they were also agents of the King of France; and from first to last they labored against the British government in the country that France had ceded to the British Crown.  So confident were they, and with so much reason, of the weakness of their opponents that they openly avowed that their object was to keep the Acadians faithful to King Louis.  When two of their number, Saint-Poncy and Chevereaux, were summoned before the Council at Annapolis, they answered, with great contempt, "We are here on the business of the King of France. " They were ordered to leave Acadia.  One of them stopped among the Indians at Cape Sable; the other, in defiance of the Council, was sent back to Annapolis by the Governor of Isle Royale.  Apparently he was again ordered away; for four years later the French governor, in expectation of speedy war, sent him to Chignecto with orders secretly to prepare the Acadians for an attack on Annapolis. 

The political work of the missionaries began with the cession of the colony, and continued with increasing activity till 1755, kindling the impotent wrath of the British officials, and drawing forth the bitter complaints of every successive governor.  For this world and the next, the priests were fathers of their flocks, generally commanding their attachment, and always their obedience.  Except in questions of disputed boundaries, where the Council alone could settle the title, the ecclesiastics took the place of judges and courts of justice, enforcing their decisions by refusal of the sacraments.  They often treated the British officials with open scorn.  Governor Armstrong writes to the Lords of Trade: "Without some particular directions as to the insolent behavior of those priests, the people will never be brought to obedience, being by them incited to daily acts of rebellion. " Another governor complains that they tell the Acadians of the destitution of the soldiers and the ruinous state of the fort, and assure them that the Pretender will soon be King of England, and that Acadia will then return to France.  "The bearer, Captain Bennett," writes Armstrong, "can further tell your Grace of the disposition of the French inhabitants of this province, and of the conduct of their missionary priests, who instil hatred into both Indians and French against the English. " As to the Indians, Governor Philipps declares that their priests hear a general confession from them twice a year, and give them absolution on condition of always being enemies of the English.  The condition was easy, thanks to the neglect of the British government, which took no pains to conciliate the Micmacs, while the French governor of Isle Royale corresponded secretly with them and made them yearly presents. 

In 1720 Philipps advised the recall of the French priests, and the sending of others in their place, as the only means of making British subjects of the Acadians, who at that time, having constantly refused the oath of allegiance, were not entitled, under the treaty, to the exercise of their religion.  Governor Armstrong wrote sixteen years after: "By some of the above papers your Grace will be informed how high the French government carries its pretensions over its priests' obedience; and how to prevent the evil consequences I know not, unless we could have missionaries from places independent of that Crown. " He expresses a well-grounded doubt whether the home government will be at the trouble and expense of such a change, though he adds that there is not a missionary among either Acadians or Indians who is not in the pay of France.  Gaulin, missionary of the Micmacs, received a "gratification" of fifteen hundred livres, besides an annual allowance of five hundred, and is described in the order granting it as a "brave man, capable even of leading these savages on an expedition. " In 1726 he was brought before the Council at Annapolis charged with incendiary conduct among both Indians and Acadians; but on asking pardon and promising nevermore to busy himself with affairs of government, he was allowed to remain in the province, and even to act as curé of the Mines.  No evidence appears that the British authorities ever molested a priest, except when detected in practices alien to his proper functions and injurious to the government.  On one occasion when two cures were vacant, one through sedition and the other apparently through illness or death, Lieutenant-Governor Armstrong requested the governor of Isle Royale to send two priests "of known probity" to fill them. 

Who were answerable for the anomalous state of affairs in the province,—the imperium in imperio where the inner power waxed and strengthened every day, and the outer relatively pined and dwindled? It was not mainly the Crown of France nor its agents, secular or clerical.  Their action under the circumstances, though sometimes inexcusable, was natural, and might have been foreseen.  Nor was it the Council at Annapolis, who had little power either for good or evil.  It was mainly the neglect and apathy of the British ministers, who seemed careless as to whether they kept Acadia or lost it, apparently thinking it not worth their notice. 

About the middle of the century they wakened from their lethargy, and warned by the signs of the times, sent troops and settlers into the province at the eleventh hour.  France and her agents took alarm, and redoubled their efforts to keep their hold on a country which they had begun to regard as theirs already.  The settlement of the English at Halifax startled the French into those courses of intrigue and violence which were the immediate cause of the removal of the Acadians in 1755. 

At the earlier period which we are now considering, the storm was still remote.  The English made no attempt either to settle the province or to secure it by sufficient garrisons; they merely tried to bind the inhabitants by an oath of allegiance which the weakness of the government would constantly tempt them to break.  When George I.  came to the throne, Deputy-Governor Caulfield tried to induce the inhabitants to swear allegiance to the new monarch.  The Acadians asked advice of Saint-Ovide, governor at Louisbourg, who sent them elaborate directions how to answer the English demand and remain at the same time faithful children of France.  Neither Caulfield nor his successor could carry their point.  The Treaty of Utrecht, as we have seen, gave the Acadians a year in which to choose between remaining in the province and becoming British subjects, or leaving it as subjects of the King of France.  The year had long ago expired, and most of them were still in Acadia, unwilling to leave it, yet refusing to own King George.  In 1720 General Richard Philipps, the governor of the province, set himself to the task of getting the oath taken, while the missionaries and the French officers at Isle Royale strenuously opposed his efforts.  He issued a proclamation ordering the Acadians to swear allegiance to the King of England or leave the country, without their property, within four months.  In great alarm, they appealed to their priests, and begged the Récollet, Père Justinien, curé of Mines, to ask advice and help from Saint-Ovide, successor of Costebelle at Louisbourg, protesting that they would abandon all rather than renounce their religion and their King.  At the same time they prepared for a general emigration by way of the isthmus and Baye Verte, where it would have been impossible to stop them. 

Without the influence of their spiritual and temporal advisers, to whom they turned in all their troubles, it is clear that the Acadians would have taken the oath and remained in tranquil enjoyment of their homes; but it was then thought important to French interests that they should remove either to Isle Royale or to Isle Saint  Jean, now Prince Edward's Island.  Hence no means were spared to prevent them from becoming British subjects, if only in name; even the Micmacs were enlisted in the good work, and induced to threaten them with their enmity if they should fail in allegiance to King Louis.  Philipps feared that the Acadians would rise in arms if he insisted on the harsh requirements of his proclamation; in which case his position would have been difficult, as they now outnumbered his garrison about five to one.  Therefore he extended indefinitely the term of four months, that he had fixed for their final choice, and continued to urge and persuade, without gaining a step towards the desired result.  In vain he begged for aid from the British authorities.  They would do nothing for him, but merely observed that while the French officers and priests had such influence over the Acadians, they would never be good subjects, and so had better be put out of the country.  This was easier said than done; for at this very time there were signs that the Acadians and the Micmacs would unite to put out the English garrison. 

Philipps was succeeded by a deputy-governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong,—a person of ardent impulses and unstable disposition.  He applied himself with great zeal and apparent confidence to accomplishing the task in which his principal had failed.  In fact, he succeeded in 1726 in persuading the inhabitants about Annapolis to take the oath, with a proviso that they should not be called upon for military service; but the main body of the Acadians stiffly refused.  In the next year he sent Ensign Wroth to Mines, Chignecto, and neighboring settlements to renew the attempt on occasion of the accession of George II.  The envoy's instructions left much to his discretion or his indiscretion, and he came back with the signatures, or crosses, of the inhabitants attached to an oath so clogged with conditions that it left them free to return to their French allegiance whenever they chose. 

Philipps now came back to Acadia to resume his difficult task.  And here a surprise meets us.  He reported a complete success.  The Acadians, as he declared, swore allegiance without reserve to King George; but he does not tell us how they were brought to do so.  Compulsion was out of the question.  They could have cut to pieces any part of the paltry English garrison that might venture outside the ditches of Annapolis, or they might have left Acadia, with all their goods and chattels, with no possibility of stopping them.  The taking of the oath was therefore a voluntary act. 

But what was the oath? The words reported by Philipps were as follows: "I promise and swear sincerely, on the faith of a Christian, that I will be entirely faithful, and will truly obey his Majesty King George the Second, whom I recognize as sovereign lord of Acadia or Nova Scotia.  So help me God. " To this the Acadians affixed their crosses, or, in exceptional cases, their names.  Recently, however, evidence has appeared that, so far at least as regards the Acadians on and near Mines Basin, the effect of the oath was qualified by a promise on the part of Philipps that they should not be required to take up arms against either French or Indians,—they on their part promising never to take up arms against the English.  This statement is made by Gaudalie, curé of the parish of Mines, and Noiville, priest at Pigiquid, or Pisiquid, now Windsor.  In fact, the English never had the folly to call on the Acadians to fight for them; and the greater part of this peace-loving people were true to their promise not to take arms against the English, though a considerable number of them did so, especially at the beginning of the Seven Years' War.  It was to this promise, whether kept or broken, that they owed their name of Neutral French. 

From first to last, the Acadians remained in a child-like dependence on their spiritual and temporal guides.  Not one of their number stands out prominently from among the rest.  They seem to have been totally devoid of natural leaders, and, unhappily for themselves, left their fate in the hands of others.  Yet they were fully aware of their numerical strength, and had repeatedly declared, in a manner that the English officers called insolent, that they would neither leave the country nor swear allegiance to King George.  The truth probably is that those who governed them had become convinced that this simple population, which increased rapidly, and could always be kept French at heart, might be made more useful to France in Acadia than out of it, and that it was needless further to oppose the taking of an oath which would leave them in quiet possession of their farms without making any change in their feelings, and probably none in their actions.  By force of natural increase Acadia would in time become the seat of a large population ardently French and ardently Catholic; and while officials in France sometimes complained of the reluctance of the Acadians to move to Isle Royale, those who directed them in their own country seem to have become willing that they should stay where they were, and place themselves in such relations with the English as should leave them free to increase and multiply undisturbed.  Deceived by the long apathy of the British government, French officials did not foresee that a time would come when it would bestir itself to make Acadia English in fact as well as in name.