A squadron of six line-of-battle ships and five frigates left early in the year for Louisbourg and arrived in safety. Three of the liners were armed _en flûte_, and were practically mere transports. Such a handful of vessels as this was not even a match for the English ships which had wintered at Halifax. Our squadron in North American waters was now under the orders of Sir Charles Hardy, who came out in the =Captain= in early spring. M. Drucourt, the naval officer who was governor of Louisbourg, foreseeing that he would be seriously attacked, could only use the vessels in the port to strengthen his defences of the place. Three frigates, the _Biche_, the _Echo_, and the _Fidèle_, were sunk to block the entrance to the harbour. The measures taken to prevent the English from coming in had one good effect for the French. They prevented the useless sacrifice of more of their ships than were already in harbour. On the 29th May Captain Duchaffault de Besné, who had left Rochefort on the 2nd with four liners, one armed _en flûte_ and three frigates, appeared outside Louisbourg. Finding the entrance closed he landed the soldiers he brought with him and went on to Quebec, where he remained a helpless spectator of the disaster. Boscawen meanwhile had left Spithead on the 18th February with a powerful fleet, escorting 13,000 troops under the command of Amherst, who had Wolfe with him as one of his subordinates. The soldiers were distributed in 150 transports. This great armament sailed first to Halifax, where Boscawen collected the whole naval force in those waters, now amounting to twenty-three sail of the line and eighteen frigates. When the necessary arrangements had been made at the base of operations soldiers and sailors started, “well combined in mutual love to each other and common resolution against the enemy,” on the 29th of May, just when Duchaffault was landing the last French reinforcement. On the 2nd June the fleet reached Gabarus Bay, on the south-eastern coast of Cape Breton, below the place where a heap of ruins marks what was once the site of Louisbourg. The combined operations lasted till the 26th July, when Drucourt beat the _chamade_ after a stout fight. As there was no enemy at sea the bulk of the work fell to the army, and was performed in a fashion presenting a welcome contrast to the futility of Carthagena and Pondicherry. Amherst was a capable general, and Wolfe, besides being the most exact of officers in all matters of detail, had the calm and rapid mind of the born leader in war, and that zest for the joys of battle which makes the supreme fighter. To the navy it fell to land the troops, to supply them, to assist in the bombardment by which some of the French ships in the harbour were destroyed, and to do one dashing piece of work in its own line.