News of these disasters to the French arms at length reached the anxious British colonies. The militia were soon discharged. The danger seemed past. And the whole population spent a merrier Christmas than any one of them had dared to hope for. In May of the next year, 1747, La Jonquiere again sailed for Louisbourg. But when he was only four days out he was overtaken off Cape Finisterre by a superior British fleet, under Anson and Warren, and was totally defeated, after a brave resistance. In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Louisbourg back to the French. The British colonies were furious, New England particularly so. But the war at large had not gone severely enough against the French to force them to abandon a stronghold on which they had set their hearts, and for which they were ready to give up any fair equivalent. The contemporary colonial sneer, often repeated since, and quite commonly believed, was that 'the important island of Cape Breton was exchanged for a petty factory in India.' This was not the case. Every power was weary of the war. But France was ready to go on with it rather than give up her last sea link with Canada. Unless this one point was conceded the whole British Empire would have been involved in another vast, and perhaps quite barren, campaign. The only choice the British negotiators could apparently make was a choice between two evils. And of the two they chose the less. CHAPTER IV LOST FOR EVER 1758 The ten years of the second French regime in Louisbourg were divided into very different halves. During the first five years, from 1749 to 1753, the mighty rivals were as much at peace, all over their conflicting frontiers, as they ever had been in the past. But from 1754 to 1758 a great and, this time, a decisive war kept drawing continually nearer, until its strangling coils at last crushed Louisbourg to death.