This cannon-studded harbor was the naval depot of France in America, the nucleus of its military power, the protector of its fisheries, the key of the gulf of St. Lawrence, the Sebastopol of the New World. For a quarter of a century it had been gathering strength by slow degrees: Acadia, poor inoffensive Acadia, from time to time, had been the prey of its rapacious neighbors; but Louisburgh had grown amid its protecting batteries, until Massachusetts felt that it was time for the armies of Gad to go forth and purge the threshing-floor with such ecclesiastical iron fans as they were wont to waft peace and good will with, wherever there was a fine opening for profit and edification. The first expedition against Louisburgh was only justifiable upon the ground that the wants of New England for additional territory were pressing, and immediate action, under the circumstances, indispensable. Levies of colonial troops were made, both in and out of the territories of the saints. The forces, however, actually employed, came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; the first supplying three thousand two hundred, the second five hundred, the third three hundred men. The cooeperation of Commodore Warren, of the English West-Indian fleet, was solicited; but the Commodore declined, on the ground "that the expedition was wholly a provincial affair, undertaken without the assent, and probably without the knowledge, of the ministry." But Governor Shirley was not a man to stop at trifles. He had a heart of lignum vitae, a rigid anti-papistical conscience, beetle brows, and an eye to the cod-fisheries. Higher authority than international law was pressed into the service. George Whitefield, then an itinerant preacher in New-England, furnished the necessary warrant for the expedition, by giving a motto for its banner: "_Nil desperandum Christo duce_"--Nothing is to be despaired of with CHRIST for leader. The command was, however, given to William Pepperel, a fish and shingle merchant of Maine. One of the chaplains of the filibusters carried a hatchet specially sharpened, to hew down the wooden images in the churches of Louisburgh. Everything that was needed to encourage and cheer the saints, was provided by Governor Shirley, especially a goodly store of New England rum, and the Rev. Samuel Moody, the lengthiest preacher in the colonies. Louisburgh, at that time feebly garrisoned, held out bravely in spite of the formidable array concentrated against it. In vain the Rev. Samuel Moody preached to its high stone walls; in vain the iconoclast chaplain brandished his ecclesiastical hatchet; in vain Whitefield's banner flaunted to the wind. The fortress held out against shot and shell, saint, flag and sermon. New England ingenuity finally circumvented Louisburgh. Humiliating as the confession is, it must be admitted that our pious forefathers did actually abandon "CHRISTO duce," and used instead a little worldly artifice.