[Footnote 3: See above, p. 193.] {222} [Sidenote: _Position of the Acadians._] [Sidenote: _Attitude of Cornwallis._] The Acadians claimed to be exempt from bearing arms in defence of their country and their country's rulers, in other words against the French and the Indian allies of the French. They were not free agents; they were terrorized by the French Government and the French priests, notorious among whom was a ruffian named Le Loutre, Vicar-General of Acadia. Spiritual excommunication and Indian hostility threatened them, if they acted with loyalty to the British King, whose subjects they had been for nearly forty years. How faithless and unscrupulous was the policy of the French is abundantly shown by official dispatches, proving that the Canadian Governor, La Jonquière, with the sanction of the French Government at home, accepted and endorsed Le Loutre's villainous schemes for preventing the Acadians from taking the full oath of allegiance, and for instigating the Indians of the peninsula to murder the English settlers. Cornwallis treated the Acadians with kindly firmness. Some of them asked to be allowed to leave the country, and he promised permission to those who should obtain passports, when peace and tranquillity were restored. For the moment he declined to allow them to cross the frontier, as it would mean sending them among French and Indians, who would compel them to bear arms against the English Government. [Sidenote: _Beaubassin occupied by English troops._] [Sidenote: _Fort Lawrence._] The frontier, as far as any line was provisionally recognized, was a little stream on the isthmus of Chignecto. On the mainland side the French had occupied a hill called Beauséjour, on the Nova Scotian side was the village of Beaubassin. In April, 1750, Cornwallis sent a force of some 400 men under Major Lawrence to occupy a position at or near Beaubassin, and to guard the isthmus. On his arrival, Lawrence found Beaubassin in flames. Le Loutre and his Indians had set fire to the place, and compelled the hapless residents to cross over to the French lines. The English left, but returned in September in stronger force; their landing was disputed by Le Loutre's savages, who were driven off, {223} and a fort was built and garrisoned, called after the name of the commander, Fort Lawrence. [Sidenote: _Murder of Captain Howe._] French and English now faced each other across a narrow stream, the French completed their fort at Beauséjour, and the temper of Le Loutre's Indians was shown by a horrible incident, the murder of an English officer, Captain Howe. Howe had gone out in answer to a flag of truce, which appeared from the French lines; but the bearer of the white flag was an Indian disguised in French uniform, who lured the Englishman into an ambush, where he was mortally wounded. The French themselves attributed this act of wanton wickedness to Le Loutre. [Sidenote: _Colonel Lawrence._] [Sidenote: _Acadian emigration._]