he arrival of a reinforcement.

For fourteen nights successively, the troops were employed in dragging
cannon from the landing place to the encampment, a distance of near
two miles, through a deep morass. The army, being totally unacquainted
with the art of conducting sieges, made its approaches irregularly,
and sustained some loss on this account.

While these approaches were making by land, the ships of war which
continued to cruise off the harbour, fell in with and captured the
Vigilant, a French man of war of sixty-four guns, having on board a
reinforcement of five hundred and sixty men, and a large quantity of
stores for the garrison. Soon after this, an unsuccessful, and,
perhaps, a rash attempt was made on the island battery by four hundred
men; of whom sixty were killed, and one hundred and sixteen taken
prisoners. All these prisoners, as if by previous concert, exaggerated
the numbers of the besieging army, a deception which was favoured by
the unevenness of the ground, and the dispersed state of the troops;
and which probably contributed to the surrender of the place. The
provincial army did indeed present a formidable front, but, in the
rear, all was frolic and confusion.

The Vigilant had been anxiously expected by the garrison, and the
information of her capture excited a considerable degree of
perturbation. This event, with the erection of some works on the high
cliff at the light house, by which the island battery was much
annoyed, and the preparations evidently making for a general assault,
determined Duchambon, the governor of Louisbourg, to surrender; and,
in a few days, he capitulated.

[Sidenote: Louisbourg surrenders.]

Upon entering the fortress, and viewing its strength, and its means of
defence, all perceived how impracticable it would have been to carry
it by assault.[141]

[Footnote 141: Belknap. Hutchison.]

The joy excited in the British colonies by the success of the
expedition against Louisbourg was unbounded. Even those who had
refused to participate in its hazards and expense, were sensible of
its advantages, and of the lustre it shed on the American arms.
Although some disposition was manifested in England, to ascribe the
whole merit of the conquest to the navy, colonel Pepperel received,
with the title of baronet, the more substantial reward of a regiment
in the British service, to be raised in America; and the same mark of
royal favour was bestowed on governor Shirley. Re