This success was speedily followed by the capitulation of another French fort at Baie Verte, at the northern end of the isthmus, and by the evacuation of a post on the mainland, at the mouth of the river St. John. The whole of Acadia on both sides of the isthmus thus passed into English hands. De Vergor some time afterwards was put on trial at Quebec for his feeble and incapable conduct, but influential friends procured his acquittal; and he remained in Canada to earn further obloquy, as commandant of the French outpost which was surprised by Wolfe in his memorable climb by night up to the Plains of Abraham.[4] Le Loutre disappeared from the scene of his wickedness in North America. He fled in disguise to Quebec, and, sailing for France, was taken prisoner and spent eight years in captivity in the island of Jersey. He seems to have died in his bed in France--a better fate than he deserved. [Footnote 4: See below, pp. 306, 307.] [Sidenote: _The expulsion of the Acadians._] The victory of the English arms was followed by the removal of the bulk of the Acadian population from Acadia. This policy had been determined upon as the only practicable {225} alternative to unqualified obedience. Such obedience, until it was too late and the die had already been cast, the Acadians refused to give. They would not swear heart-whole allegiance to King George; they had abetted his enemies year after year; many of them had actually borne arms against the English; and with Louisbourg in threatening strength in the immediate neighbourhood, with manifold other difficulties to face--for before the actual expulsion Braddock's defeat and death on the Monongahela river had occurred--it was absolutely necessary for the English authorities to make the Nova Scotian peninsula permanently safe. The time to strike was while there was an adequate force on the spot, and before the Massachusetts contingent returned to Boston. Sternly and relentlessly Governor Lawrence took his measures; at Beaubassin, at Annapolis, round the shores of the Basin of Mines, where the most pleasing features of Acadian settlement were to be found, the majority of able-bodied men were secured; and, as the transports came up, groups of peasants were carried off to other lands. In the actual work of expulsion, no unnecessary harshness appears to have been used; families were as a rule kept together, and went out hand in hand into exile; but they were taken, an ignorant and bewildered crowd, from the homes of their childhood, and were transported, helpless and hopeless, to distant countries, where there was another religion and another race. The pity of it was that, after forty years of so-called English government, the Acadians never believed that that Government, when it threatened or decreed, would be as good as its word. When therefore the blow came, it stunned a people who had been bred in the belief that much would be said and nothing would be done. [Sidenote: _The number transported._]