Nova Scotia Archives

Acadian Heartland

Records of the Deportation and Le Grand Dérangement, 1714-1768

ACADIAN FRENCH.

143

which was hardly effected, and they lodg'd in the Fort, in Barracks fitted up with all the dispatch consistent with the other Repairs necessary for our Defence when I was inform’d that a Detachment of officers and men from Lewisburg with a larger Body of Indians than had come before, amounting in all to Six or Seven hundred men were up our River within three leagues of us. I made the necessary disposition to receive them. After they had rested two days up the River, their Journey by Land from Chignecto, where they landed from Lewisburg, and from Manis through which they pass’d, having been much fatiguing, they march'd down and shew'd themselves on the brow of the hill a little more than a mile from the Fort, and then pitch’d their Hutts under cover of it. The next morning when they march'd down to us under the cover of some hedges and fences, with Colours flying, a Gunn was pointed att their Colours, and graz’d as we have heard since between Monsr. Duvivier their Commander and his Brother a Lieutenant. They did not then think fitt to proceed further, butt soon return’d to their Camp beyond the Mill, and choose to come in the night when they could not be much exposed to our artillery. They came accordingly about the Fort keeping a continual fire att our parapets and approaching under the cover of the hollow, I mention'd, to the edge of the Parapet of our cover’d way which is low and has yet no Pallisadoes round it. This kind of attack kept the whole garrison in allarm all night, none being able to sleep when there were so many places of our Ramparts of easy access and as the whole is revested with firr timber not very hard to be sett on fire.

It was after several such attacks that Monsr. Duvivier sent his Brother with a flagg of truce to deliver me a letter, wherein he intimated that he expected a Seventy, a Sixty and a Fourty gunns Shipps, mann’d one third above their compliment, with a Transport with two hundred and fifty men more of regular Troops with Cannon, mortars and other implements of warr; that as he knew we could not resist that Force and must then surrender we could expect no other terms than to be made prisonners of Warr, butt that out of the esteem and regard he had for us if I would enter into articles, in which he offer'd all that could be desir'd he would ensure they should stand, tho’ nothing should he concluded, till the Fleet was in the Bassin, and we were sure it was of the strength and provided with every thing he mention'd, and that in the mean time if our succors arriv'd the whole should go for nothing,