A request had been sent to England for ships of war, and Warren, the English commodore at Antigua in the West Indies, was asked to bring his squadron. When the message reached him, he was without orders from home, and refused to sail; but almost immediately afterwards permission came, and he left at once for the North American coast, joining the expedition, which had already started, at their rendezvous at Canso. [Sidenote: _The expedition starts._] It was on March 24, 1745 that the New Englanders left Boston; on or about April 4 the transports began to arrive at Canso. They carried men who knew little or nothing of scientific warfare, and for whom amateur strategists had drawn up fantastic plans of campaign; but they were colonists of tough English breed, their Puritan proclivities had been strengthened by the Methodist revival, and the great preacher, George Whitfield, had given to Pepperell for the motto of the expedition 'Nil desperandum Christo duce.' [Illustration: Map of Louisbourg] [Sidenote: _Louisbourg and its surroundings._] 'Louisbourg is built upon a tongue of land which stretches out into the sea and gives the town an oblong shape. It is about half a league in circumference.'[5] The tongue of land in question is part of a larger peninsula running out to the south and east from the coast of Cape Breton Island. The little promontory, which was covered by the {200} town and fortifications of Louisbourg, has an almost due easterly direction, and it is prolonged to the east by reefs ending in a small rocky island, on which the French erected a battery to command the mouth of the harbour, the channel being about half a mile wide. The harbour lay to the north and north-east of the town; on the other side was the ocean. To the west of the whole peninsula, of which the Louisbourg promontory was but a small part, is a large semicircular bay, known as Gabarus Bay. Surrounded by the sea on all sides but one, on that one side--the western side--the town was strongly protected by a ditch and rampart, outside which was marshy ground. Moreover, almost due north of the town, on the edge of the harbour, was a battery, known as the Grand Battery, over against the Island Battery which has been already mentioned. Nature, French money, and French engineers had combined to make a stronghold, which seemed almost impregnable. [Footnote 5: From the anonymous _Lettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg_, translated by Professor Wrong, pp. 27, 28.] [Sidenote: _The French garrison._]