The English documents on the siege of Louisbourg are many and voluminous. The Pepperrell Papers and the Belknap Papers, both in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, afford a vast number of contemporary letters and documents on the subject. The large volume entitled _Siege of Louisbourg_, in the same repository, contains many more, including a number of autograph diaries of soldiers and others. To these are to be added the journals of General Wolcott, James Gibson, Benjamin Cleaves, Seth Pomeroy, and several others, in print or manuscript, among which is especially to be noted the journal appended to Shirley’s Letter to the Duke of Newcastle of October 28, 1745, and bearing the names of Pepperrell, Brigadier Waldo, Colonel Moore, and Lieutenant-Colonels Lothrop and Gridley, who attest its accuracy. Many papers have also been drawn from the Public Record Office of London. Accounts of this affair have hitherto rested, with but slight exceptions, on English sources alone. The archives of France have furnished useful material to the foregoing narrative, notably the long report of the governor, Duchambon, to the minister of war, and the letter of the intendant, Bigot, to the same personage, within about six weeks after the surrender. But the most curious French evidence respecting the siege is the _Lettre d’un Habitant de Louisbourg contenant une Relation exacte & circonstanciée de la Prise de l’Isle-Royale par les Anglois. A Québec, chez Guillaume le Sincère, à l’Image de la Vérité, 1745._ This little work, of eighty-one printed pages, is extremely rare. I could study it only by having _a literatim_ transcript made from the copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale, as it was not in the British Museum. It bears the signature B. L. N., and is dated _à ... ce 28 Août, 1745._ The imprint of Québec, etc., is certainly a mask, the book having no doubt been printed in France. It severely criticises Duchambon, and makes him mainly answerable for the disaster. For French views of the siege of Louisbourg, _see_ Appendix B. CHAPTER XXI. 145 1745-1747. DUC D’ANVILLE. LOUISBOURG AFTER THE CONQUEST.--MUTINY.--PESTILENCE.--STEPHEN WILLIAMS: HIS DIARY.--SCHEME OF CONQUERING CANADA.--NEWCASTLE’S PROMISES.--ALARM IN CANADA.--PROMISES BROKEN.--PLAN AGAINST CROWN POINT.--STARTLING NEWS.--D’ANVILLE’S FLEET.--LOUISBOURG TO BE AVENGED.--DISASTERS OF D’ANVILLE.--STORM.--PESTILENCE.--FAMINE.-- DEATH OF D’ANVILLE.--SUICIDE OF THE VICE-ADMIRAL.--RUINOUS FAILURE.--RETURN VOYAGE.--DEFEAT OF LA JONQUIÈRE.