essary substantial aid, and he established a strict blockade
which played a vital part in the siege of the French fortress.

In this hour of deadly peril Louisbourg was in not quite happy case.
Some of the French officers, who, would otherwise have starved on their
low pay, were taking part in illicit trade and were neglecting their
duties. Just after Christmas in 1744, there had been a mutiny over a
petty question of butter and bacon. Here, as in all French colonies,
there were cliques, with the suspicions and bitterness which they
involve. The Governor Duchambon, though brave enough, was a man of poor
judgment in a position that required both tact and talent. The English
did not make the mistake of delaying their preparations. They were
indeed so prompt that they arrived at Canseau early in April and had to
wait for the ice to break up in Gabarus Bay, near Louisbourg, where they
intended to land. Here, on April 30, the great fleet appeared. A watcher
in Louisbourg counted ninety-six ships standing off shore. With little
opposition from the French the amazing army landed at Freshwater Cove.

Then began an astonishing siege. The commander of the New England
forces, William Pepperrell, was a Maine trader, who dealt in a little
of everything, fish, groceries, lumber, ships, land. Though innocent of
military science, he was firm and tactful. A British officer with strict
military ideas could not, perhaps, have led that strange army with
success. Pepperrell knew that he had good fighting material; he knew,
too, how to handle it. In his army of some four thousand men there was
probably not one officer with a regular training. Few of his force had
proper equipment, but nearly all his men were handy on a ship as well as
on land. In Louisbourg were about two thousand defenders, of whom only
five or six hundred were French regulars. These professional soldiers
watched with contempt not untouched with apprehension the breaches of
military precedent in the operations of the besiegers. Men harnessed
like horses dragged guns through morasses into position, exposed
themselves recklessly, and showed the skill, initiative, and resolution
which we have now come to consider the dominant qualities of the Yankee.
In time Warren arrived with a British squadron and then the French were
puzzled anew. They could not understand the relations between the fleet
and the army, which seemed to them to belong to different nations. The
New Englanders