' He had hardly sent this off
before he was attacked by four boats from Louisbourg.
Quite undaunted, however, he stood out on the open beach
with his thirteen men and kept them all at bay till the
reinforcement and the flag arrived with Bradstreet, who
was afterwards to win distinction as the captor of Fort
Frontenac during the great campaign of 1759.
This disgraceful abandonment and this dramatic capture
of the Royal Battery marked the first and most decisive
turning-point in the fortunes of the siege. The French
were dismayed, the British were elated; and both the
dismay and the elation grew as time wore on, because
everything seemed to conspire against the French and in
favour of the British. Even the elements, as the anonymous
Habitant de Louisbourg complains in his wonderfully candid
diary, seemed to have taken sides. There had never been
so fine a spring for naval operations. But this was the
one thing which was entirely independent of French fault
or British merit.
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