French regulars still regarded the Louisbourg routine as their most disgusting duty. But it became more tolerable with the increase of the garrison. The fortifications were examined, reported on, repaired, and extended. The engineers, like all the other Frenchmen connected with unhappy Louisbourg, Bigot alone excepted, were second- and third-rate men; and the actual work was done as badly as before. But, on the whole, the place was strengthened, especially by a battery near the lighthouse. With this and the Island Battery, one on either side of the narrow entrance, which the Royal Battery faced directly, almost a hundred guns could be brought to bear on any vessels trying to force their way in. The end of the five years' truce was marked by voluminous reports and elaborate arguments to prove how well Louisbourg was being governed, how admirably the fortifications had been attended to (with the inadequate means at the intendant's disposal), and how desirable it was, from every point of view, for the king to spend a great deal more money all round in the immediate future. Fisheries, shipbuilding, fortification, Indians, trade, religion, the naval and military situation, were all represented as only needing more money to become quite perfect. Louisbourg was correctly enough described as an indispensable link between France and the long chain of French posts in the valleys of the Mississippi and the St Lawrence. But less well explained in America and less well understood in Europe was the fact that the separate military chains in Old France and New could never hold an oversea dominion unless a naval chain united them. Some few Frenchmen understood this thoroughly. But most did not. And France, as a whole, hoped that a vigorous offensive on land would more than counterbalance whatever she might lose by an enforced defensive on the sea. In 1754 Washington's first shot beyond the Alleghanies broke the hollow truce between the French and British colonies, whose lines of expansion had once more inevitably crossed each other's path. This proved to be the beginning of the last 'French and Indian War' in American history, of that 'British Conquest of Canada' which formed part of what contemporary Englishmen called the 'Maritime War,' and of that great military struggle which continental Europe called the 'Seven Years' War.' The year 1755 saw Braddock's Defeat in the west, the battle of Lake George in the centre, and two pregnant events in the east, one on either side of Louisbourg--the expulsion of the Acadians, and the capture by Boscawen of two French men-of-war with several hundred soldiers who were to reinforce the army that was soon to be commanded by Montcalm. The next year, 1756, saw the formal declaration of war in Europe, its continued prosecution in America, and the taking of Oswego, which was the first of Montcalm's four victories against the overwhelming British. But Louisbourg still remained untouched.