Without loss of time Pepperell began to make his way across the marshes lying between his camp and Louisbourg, erecting batteries as he went to answer the cannonade of the garrison. Each morning saw the intrepid besiegers closer to the walls, having advanced their intrenchments under cover of the darkness. A daring assault had meanwhile carried the grand battery, and from a salient post on Light-house Point Pepperell's guns were soon able to silence the island redoubt at the mouth of the harbour. The battle swayed from side to side as the desperate garrison made a sortie, or the besiegers impetuously rushed to the attack. But even the walls of Louisbourg could not for long withstand that furious and ceaseless cannonade, which shattered the heaviest bastions; and when the gallant fort could hold out no longer, a white flag fluttered from the broken ramparts, and the brave Duchambon, his veteran garrison decimated, marched out with the honours of war. The loss of Louisbourg was the severest blow yet sustained by New France, and without delay a powerful expedition was organised to recapture the fortress and take revenge upon the enemy. No such formidable and menacing armada had ever left the shores of France as now sailed out of Rochelle, under command of the Duc d'Anville. Thirty-nine ships of the line convoyed transports bearing a veteran army westward; and the English colonists trembled for its coming. However, the advance tidings of this terrible flotilla were all that reached the New World; for hardly had D'Anville lost sight of the French coast before two of his ships fell a prey to British gunboats, and a succession of storms scattered the rest in all directions. At length, after weeks of delay, the surviving vessels struggled one by one into the harbour of Chedabucto. In deadly dejection, D'Anville had succumbed to apoplexy; moreover, his successor, the Admiral D'Estournelle, had committed suicide; and the new commander was La Jonquière, a distinguished naval officer, then on his way to Quebec to assume the office of Governor-General. His sorry fleet notwithstanding, La Jonquière decided to strike a blow at Annapolis. Thither he shaped his course; but again a violent storm overtook them on the way, and the ships, unable to weather the tempest, steered straight for France once more. Even in the face of these dark disasters France was unwilling to abandon Louisbourg, and in 1747 another powerful naval force under La Jonquière set out for Acadia. Like its magnificent but hapless predecessor, this fleet had hardly cleared the Bay of Biscay before it came to grief. Falling in with a British squadron under Admiral Anson off Cape Finisterre, it was almost totally destroyed.