ienced but quite as determined as the most intrepid veterans of the
campaigns in Europe. During more than twenty years the courage and
devotion of the Canadians never faltered for a single day.

Then began an unequal, but an obstinate struggle, of which the issue,
easy to foresee, never cowed or appeased the actors in it. The able
tactics of M. de Vaudreuil, governor of the colony, had forced the
English to scatter their forces and their attacks over an immense
territory, far away from the most important settlements; the forts which
they besieged were scarcely defended. "A large enclosure, with a
palisade round it, in which there were but one officer and nineteen
soldiers," wrote the Marquis of Montcalm at a later period, "could not be
considered as a fort adapted to sustain a siege." In the first campaign,
the settlements formed by the Acadian emigrants on the borders of the Bay
of Fundy were completely destroyed: the French garrisons were obliged to
evacuate their positions.

This withdrawal left Acadia, or neutral land, at the mercy of the
Anglo-Americans. Before Longfellow had immortalized, in the poem of
Evangeline, the peaceful habits and the misfortunes of the Acadians,
Raynal had already pleaded their cause before history. "A simple and a
kindly people," he said, "who had no liking for blood, agriculture was
their occupation.

They had been settled in the low grounds, forcing back, by dint of dikes,
the sea and rivers wherewith those plains were covered. The drained
marshes produced wheat, rye, oats, barley, and maize. Immense prairies
were alive with numerous flocks; as many as sixty thousand horned cattle
were counted there. The habitations, nearly all built of wood, were very
commodious, and furnished with the neatness sometimes found amongst our
European farmers in the easiest circumstances. Their manners were
extremely simple; the little differences which might from time to time
arise between the colonists were always amicably settled by the elders.
It was a band of brothers, all equally ready to give or receive that
which they considered common to all men."

War and its horrors broke in upon this peaceful idyl.

The Acadians had constantly refused to take the oath to England; they
were declared guilty of having violated neutrality. For the most part
the accusation was unjust; but all were involved in the same
condemnation.

On the 5th of September, 1755, four hundred and eighteen heads of