With this
and the Island Battery, one on either side of the narrow
entrance, which the Royal Battery faced directly, almost
a hundred guns could be brought to bear on any vessels
trying to force their way in.
The end of the five years' truce was marked by voluminous
reports and elaborate arguments to prove how well Louisbourg
was being governed, how admirably the fortifications had
been attended to (with the inadequate means at the
intendant's disposal), and how desirable it was, from
every point of view, for the king to spend a great deal
more money all round in the immediate future. Fisheries,
shipbuilding, fortification, Indians, trade, religion,
the naval and military situation, were all represented
as only needing more money to become quite perfect.
Louisbourg was correctly enough described as an
indispensable link between France and the long chain of
French posts in the valleys of the Mississippi and the
St Lawrence. But less well explained in America and less
well understood in Europe was the fact that the separate
military chains in Old France and New could never hold
an oversea dominion unless a naval chain united them.
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