Thus matters drifted on until, in June, 1752, a Frenchman, Langlade, came down from the lakes with a band of Indian warriors, attacked the Miamis at Pickawillany, took the town, and killed its chief--who was known to the French as La Demoiselle, and who was feared by them as a warm friend of their English rivals. The place was a centre of English trade, there were English traders in it when the attack was made, and this French success was the beginning of action, on a larger scale than had hitherto been attempted, for the conquest and control of the Ohio valley. [Sidenote: _Halifax._] Founded in 1749, Halifax, on the coast of Nova Scotia, was, in 1752, a town of 4,000 inhabitants. Had the settlement been made thirty years earlier, immediately after the Peace of Utrecht instead of after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the story of Acadia would have been a different and probably a happier one. Mascarene at Annapolis, and Shirley at Boston, saw the necessity of introducing English settlers into the peninsula in order to balance the French malcontents, and the British Government, when giving back Louisbourg to France, recognized at length that steps must be taken to strengthen the English hold on Nova Scotia. It was determined to recruit the English, or at any rate the Protestant, {220} element in the population from Europe, from the North American colonies, and from the ranks of the men who were withdrawn from Louisbourg; and Chebucto harbour on the Atlantic coast of the Nova Scotian peninsula was selected as the scene of a new township to be well fortified and strongly garrisoned. [Sidenote: _The first settlers at Halifax._] [Sidenote: _Cornwallis._] Here was created the city of Halifax, called after the Earl of Halifax, at the time 'First Lord of Trade and Plantations.' In founding it, the English had regard to the methods by which the French had established their colonies on the St. Lawrence. Halifax was in its origin a military colony. The first settlers consisted largely of officers and privates of the army and navy, who, when peace was concluded, received their discharge and who were supplemented by a certain number of labourers and artizans. Parliament voted 40,000 pounds in aid of the initial expenses. Free passages, free grants of land, and the cost of subsistence for a year after landing were provided, privileges which secured a considerable number of colonists; 1,400 immigrants were landed from the first batch of transports at Chebucto harbour,[2] and others followed. A good Governor was appointed, Colonel Edward Cornwallis, uncle of Lord Cornwallis who surrendered at Yorktown and ruled India.