This disgraceful abandonment and this dramatic capture of the Royal Battery marked the first and most decisive turning-point in the fortunes of the siege. The French were dismayed, the British were elated; and both the dismay and the elation grew as time wore on, because everything seemed to conspire against the French and in favour of the British. Even the elements, as the anonymous Habitant de Louisbourg complains in his wonderfully candid diary, seemed to have taken sides. There had never been so fine a spring for naval operations. But this was the one thing which was entirely independent of French fault or British merit. All the other strokes of luck owed something to human causes. Wise-acres had shaken their heads over the crazy idea of taking British cannon balls solely to fit French cannon that were to be taken at the beginning of the siege: it was too much like selling the pelt before the trap was sprung. Yet these balls actually were used to load the forty-two pounders taken with the Royal Battery! Moreover, as if to cap the climax, ten other cannon were found buried in the North-East Harbour; and again spare British balls were found to fit exactly! The fact is that what we should now call the Intelligence Department had been doing good work the year before by spying out the land at Louisbourg and reporting to the proper men in Boston. The Bostonians had always intended to take the Royal Battery at the earliest possible moment. But nobody had thought that the French would abandon it without a blow and leave it intact for their enemy, with all its armament complete. The French council of war apparently shrank from hurting the feelings of the engineer in charge, who had pleaded for its preservation! They then ran away without spiking the guns properly, and without making the slightest attempt either to burn the carriages or knock the trunnions off. The invaluable stores were left in their places. The only real destruction was caused by a barrel of powder, which some bunglers blew up by mistake. The inevitable consequence of all this French ineptitude was that the Royal Battery roared against Louisbourg the very next morning with tremendous effect, smashing the works most exposed to its fire, bringing down houses about the inhabitants' ears, and sending the terrified non-combatants scurrying off to underground cover. Meanwhile the bulk of the New Englanders were establishing their camp along the brook which fell into Gabarus Bay beside Flat Point and within two miles of Louisbourg. Equipment of all kinds was very scarce. Tents were so few and bad that old sails stretched over ridge-poles had to be used instead. When sails ran short, brushwood shelters roofed in with overlapping spruce boughs were used as substitutes.