time grazed as many as
sixty thousand head of cattle. The simple wants of the peasants were
supplied by domestic manufacture or by importations from Louisburg. So
great was their attachment to the government and institutions of their
fatherland that during the aggressions of the English after the conquest
of the region a great part of the population--some ten thousand in
number, it is said, though the figures are disputed--abandoned their
homes and migrated to that portion of Acadia still claimed by the
French, while others removed to Cape Breton or to Canada. About seven
thousand still remained in the peninsula of Nova Scotia, but they
claimed a political neutrality, resolutely refusing to take the oath of
allegiance to the alien conquerors. They were accused of intriguing with
their countrymen at Louisburg, with resisting the English authority, and
with inciting, and even leading, the Indians to ravage the English
settlements.

The cruel Micmacs needed little instigation. They swooped down on the
little town of Dartmouth, opposite Halifax, and within gunshot of its
forts, and reaped a rich harvest of scalps and booty. The English
prisoners they sometimes sold at Louisburg for arms and ammunition. The
Governor asserted that pure compassion was the motive of this traffic,
in order to rescue the captives from massacre. He demanded, however, an
excessive ransom for their liberation. The Indians were sometimes,
indeed generally, it was asserted, led in these murderous raids by
French commanders. These violations of neutrality, however, were chiefly
the work of a few turbulent spirits. The mass of the Acadian peasants
seem to have been a peaceful and inoffensive people, although they
naturally sympathized with their countrymen, and rejoiced at the
victory of Du Quesne, and sorrowed at the defeat of Lake George. They
were, nevertheless, declared rebels and outlaws, and a council at
Halifax, confounding the innocent with the guilty, decreed the expulsion
of the entire French population.

[Illustration: British officer reads the decree of exile of the Acadian
neutrals in the village church.

Painting by Frank Dicksee, A.R.A.]

The decision was promptly given effect. Ships soon appeared before the
principal settlement in the Bay of Fundy. All the male inhabitants over
ten years of age were summoned to hear the King's command. At Grandpre
four hundred assembled in the village church, when the British officer
read from the a