Those Frenchmen who did care for outlandish places went
east to India or west to Canada. Nobody wanted to go to
a small, dull, out-of-the-way garrison town like Louisbourg,
where there was no social life whatever--nothing but
fishermen, smugglers, petty traders, a discontented
garrison, generally half composed of foreigners, and a
band of dishonest, second-rate officials, whose one idea
was how to get rich and get home. The inspectors who were
sent out either failed in their duty and joined the
official gang of thieves, or else resigned in disgust.
Worse still, because this taint was at the very source,
the royal government in France was already beset with
that entanglement of weakness and corruption which lasted
throughout the whole century between the decline of Louis
XIV and the meteoric rise of Napoleon.
The founders of Louisbourg took their time to build it.
It was so very profitable to spin the work out as long
as possible. The plan of the fortress was good. It was
modelled after the plans of Vauban, who had been the
greatest engineer in the greatest European army of the
previous generation.
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