[Illustration: W^m Pepperrell] _Decisive Events in American History_ THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 1745 BY SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE AUTHOR OF “BURGOYNE’S INVASION OF 1777” ETC. BOSTON MDCCCXCI LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 10 MILK STREET NEXT “THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE” NEW YORK CHAS. T. DILLINGHAM 718 AND 720 BROADWAY Copyright, 1890, By Lee and Shepard. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Colonial Seacoast Defences 9 II. Louisburg Revisited 13 III. Louisburg to Solve Important Political and Military Problems 24 IV. Résumé of Events to the Declaration of War 33 V. “Louisburg must be taken” 46 VI. The Army and its General 59 VII. The Army at Canso 73 VIII. The Siege 80 IX. The Siege Continued 101 X. Afterthoughts 126 [Illustration: ISLAND BATTERY, WITH LOUISBURG IN THE DISTANCE.] THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 1745 I COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES The creation of great maritime fortresses, primarily designed to hold with iron hand important highways of commerce, like Gibraltar, or simply to guard great naval arsenals, like Kronstadt, or, again, placed where some great river has cleft a broad path into the heart of a country, thus laying it open to invasion, has long formed part of the military policy of all maritime nations. In the New World the Spaniards were the first to emphasize their adhesion to these essential principles by the erection of strongholds at Havana, Carthagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz, not more to guarantee the integrity of their colonial possessions, than to protect themselves against the rapacity of the titled freebooters of Europe, to whom the treasure fleets of Mexico and the East offered a most alluring prey. When Spain carried the purse, all the crowned heads of Europe seem to have turned highwaymen.