Position of the Acadians

The English after 1712 were almost as anxious to keep the French in Acadia as they were forty years later to get them out of it.

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Previously in A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 1. Continuing Chapter 9.

Attempts were made to induce the Indians of Acadia to move to the new colony but they refused, and to compel them was out of the question. But by far the most desirable accession to the establishment of Isle Royale would be that of the Acadian French, who were too numerous to be transported in the summary manner practiced in the case of the fishermen of Placentia. It was necessary to persuade rather than compel them to migrate, and to this end great reliance was placed on their priests, especially Fathers Pain and Dominique. Ponchartrain himself wrote to the former on the subject. The priest declares that he read the letter to his flock, who answered that they wished to stay in Acadia; and he adds that the other Acadians were of the same mind, being unwilling to leave their rich farms and risk starvation on a wild and barren island.[1] “Nevertheless,” he concludes, “we shall fulfil the intentions of his Majesty by often holding before their eyes that religion for which they ought to make every sacrifice.” He and his brother priests kept their word. Freedom of worship was pledged on certain conditions to the Acadians by the Treaty of Utrecht, and no attempt was ever made to deprive them of it; yet the continual declaration of their missionaries that their souls were in danger under English rule was the strongest spur to impel them to migrate.

[1: Félix Pain à Costebelle, 23 Septembre, 1713.]

The condition of the English in Acadia since it fell into their hands had been a critical one. Port Royal, thenceforth called Annapolis Royal, or simply Annapolis, had been left, as before mentioned, in charge of Colonel Vetch, with a heterogeneous garrison of four hundred and fifty men.[2] The Acadians of the banlieue — a term defined as covering a space of three miles round the fort — had been included in the capitulation, and had taken an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, binding so long as they remained in the province. Some of them worked, for the garrison and helped to repair the fort, which was in a ruinous condition. Meanwhile the Micmac Indians remained fiercely hostile to the English; and in June, 1711, aided by a band of Penobscots, they ambuscaded and killed or captured nearly seventy of them. This completely changed the attitude of the Acadians. They broke their oath, rose against their new masters, and with their Indian friends, invested the fort to the number of five or six hundred. Disease, desertion, and the ambuscade had reduced the garrison to about two hundred effective men, and the defenses of the place were still in bad condition.[3] The assailants, on the other hand, had no better leader than the priest, Gaulin, missionary of the Micmacs and prime mover in the rising. He presently sailed for Placentia to beg for munitions and a commander; but his errand failed, the siege came to nought, and the besiegers dispersed. Vaudreuil, from whom the Acadians had begged help, was about to send it when news of the approach of Walker’s fleet forced him to keep all his strength for his own defense.

[2: Vetch was styled “General and Commander-in-chief of all his Majesty’s troops in these parts, and Governor of the fort of Annapolis Royal, country of l’Accady and Nova Scotia.” Hence he was the first English governor of Nova Scotia after its conquest in 1710. He was appointed a second time in 1715, Nicholson having served in the interim.]

[3: Narrative of Paul Mascarene, addressed to Nicholson. According to French accounts, a pestilence at Annapolis had carried off three fourths of the garrison. Gaulin à — — , 5 Septembre, 1711; Cahouet au Ministre, 20 Juillet, 1711. In reality a little more than one hundred had died.]

From this time to the end of the war, the chief difficulties of the governor of Acadia rose, not from the enemy, but from the British authorities at home. For more than two years he, with his starved and tattered garrison, were treated with absolute neglect. He received no orders, instructions, or money.[4] Acadia seemed forgotten by the ministry, till Vetch heard at last that Nicholson was appointed to succeed him.

[4: Passages from Vetch’s letters, in Patterson, Memoir of Vetch.]

Now followed the Treaty of Utrecht, the cession of Acadia to England, and the attempt on the part of France to induce the Acadians to remove to Isle Royale. Some of the English officials had once been of opinion that this French Catholic population should be transported to Martinique or some other distant French colony, and its place supplied by Protestant families sent from England or Ireland.[5] Since the English Revolution, Protestantism was bound up with the new political order, and Catholicism with the old. No Catholic could favor the Protestant succession, and hence politics were inseparable from creed. Vetch, who came of a race of hot and stubborn Covenanters, had been one of the most earnest for replacing the Catholic Acadians by Protestants; but after the peace he and others changed their minds. No Protestant colonists appeared, nor was there the smallest sign that the government would give itself the trouble to attract any. It was certain that if the Acadians removed at all, they would go, not to Martinique or any other distant colony, but to the new military establishment of Isle Royale, which would thus become a strong and dangerous neighbor to the feeble British post of Annapolis. Moreover, the labor of the French inhabitants was useful and sometimes necessary to the English garrison, which depended mainly on them for provisions; and if they left the province, they would leave it a desert, with the prospect of long remaining so.

[5: Vetch to the Earl of Dartmouth, 22 January, 1711; Memorial of Council of War at Annapolis, 14 October, 1710.]

Hence it happened that the English were for a time almost as anxious to keep the Acadians in Acadia as they were forty years later to get them out of it; nor had the Acadians themselves any inclination to leave their homes. But the French authorities needed them at Isle Royale and made every effort to draw them thither. By the fourteenth article of the Treaty of Utrecht such of them as might choose to leave Acadia were free to do so within the space of a year, carrying with them their personal effects; while a letter of Queen Anne, addressed to Nicholson, then governor of Acadia, permitted the emigrants to sell their lands and houses.

The missionary Félix Pain had reported, as we have seen, that they were, in general, disposed to remain where they were; on which Costebelle, who now commanded at Louisbourg, sent two officers, La Ronde Denys and Pensens, with instructions to set the priests at work to persuade their flocks to move.[6] La Ronde Denys and his colleague repaired to Annapolis, where they promised the inhabitants vessels for their removal, provisions for a year, and freedom from all taxation for ten years. Then, having been well prepared in advance, the heads of families were formed in a circle, and in presence of the English governor, the two French officers, and the priests Justinien, Bonaventure, and Gaulin, they all signed, chiefly with crosses, a paper to the effect that they would live and die subjects of the King of France.[7] A few embarked at once for Isle Royale in the vessel “Marie-Joseph,” and the rest were to follow within the year.

[6: Costebelle, Instruction au Capitaine de la Ronde, 1714.]

[7: Écrit des Habitants d’Annapolis Royale, 25 Aoust, 1714; Mémoire de La Ronde Denys, 30 Aoust, 1714.]

This result was due partly to the promises of La Ronde Denys, and still more to a pastoral letter from the Bishop of Quebec, supporting the assurances of the missionaries that the heretics would rob them of the ministrations of the Church. This was not all. The Acadians about

Annapolis had been alienated by the conduct of the English authorities, which was not conciliating, and on the part of the governor was sometimes outrageous.[8] Yet those of the banlieue had no right to complain, since they had made themselves liable to the penalties of treason by first taking an oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, and then breaking it by trying to seize her fort.[9]

[8: In 1711, however, the missionary Félix Pain says, “The English have treated the Acadians with much humanity.” — Père Félix à — — , 8 Septembre, 1711.]

[9: This was the oath taken after the capitulation, which bound those who took it to allegiance so long as they remained in the province.]

Governor Nicholson, like his predecessor, was resolved to keep the Acadians in the province if he could. This personage, able, energetic, perverse, headstrong, and unscrupulous, conducted himself, even towards the English officers and soldiers, in a manner that seems unaccountable, and that kindled their utmost indignation.[10] Towards the Acadians his behavior was still worse. As Costebelle did not keep his promise to send vessels to bring them to Isle Royale, they built small ones for themselves, and the French authorities at Louisbourg sent them the necessary rigging. Nicholson ordered it back, forbade the sale of their lands and houses, — a needless stretch of power, as there was nobody to buy, — and would not let them sell even their personal effects, coolly setting at nought both the Treaty of Utrecht and the letter of the Queen.[11]

[10: “As he used to curse and Damm Governor Vetch and all his friends, he is now served himself in the same manner.” — Adams to Steele, 24 January, 1715.]

[11: For a great number of extracts from documents on this subject see a paper by Abbé Casgrain in Canada Français, i. 411-414; also the documentary supplement of the same publication.]

Nicholson was but a short time at Annapolis, leaving the government, during most of his term, to his deputies, Caulfield and afterwards Doucette, both of whom roundly denounce their principal for his general conduct; while both, in one degree or another, followed his example in preventing so far as they could the emigration of the Acadians. Some of them, however, got away, and twelve or fifteen families who settled at Port Toulouse, on Isle Royale, were near perishing from cold and hunger.

[La Ronde Denys au Ministre, 3 Décembre, 1715.]

From Annapolis the French agents, La Ronde Denys and Pensens, proceeded to the settlements about Chignecto and the Basin of Mines, — the most populous and prosperous parts of Acadia. Here they were less successful than before. The people were doubtful and vacillating, — ready enough to promise, but slow to perform. While declaring with perfect sincerity their devotion to “our invincible monarch,” as they called King Louis, who had just been compelled to surrender their country, they clung tenaciously to the abodes of their fathers. If they had wished to emigrate, the English governor had no power to stop them. From Baye Verte, on the isthmus, they had frequent and easy communication with the French at Louisbourg, which the English did not and could not interrupt. They were armed, and they far outnumbered the English garrison; while at a word they could bring to their aid the Micmac warriors, who had been taught to detest the English heretics as foes of God and man. To say that they wished to leave Acadia but were prevented from doing so by a petty garrison at the other end of the province, so feeble that it could hardly hold Annapolis itself, is an unjust reproach upon a people who, though ignorant and weak of purpose, were not wanting in physical courage. The truth is that from this time to their forced expatriation in 1755, all the Acadians, except those of Annapolis and its immediate neighborhood, were free to go or stay at will. Those of the eastern parts of the province especially, who formed the greater part of the population, were completely their own masters. This was well known to the French authorities. The governor of Louisbourg complains of the apathy of the Acadians.[12] Saint-Ovide declares that they do not want to fulfil the intentions of the King and remove to Isle Royale. Costebelle makes the same complaint; and again, after three years of vain attempts to overcome their reluctance, he writes that every effort has failed to induce them to migrate.

[12: Costebelle au Ministre, 15 Janvier, 1715.]

From A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 1, Chapter 9 by Francis Parkman

Volume 6 of Parkman’s History of France in North America titled “A Half-Century of Conflict” was itself published in two volumes. This means that “Volume 6” (consistent with how past books published on this website were called) must be called “Part 6”, instead – to avoid confusion. This book is Volume 1 of “A Half-Century of Conflict”. The next book in the series will be called “Part 6, A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 2”.

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Preface to this book.

This book, forming Part VI. of the series called France and England in North America, fills the gap between Part V., “Count Frontenac,” and Part VII., “Montcalm and Wolfe;” so that the series now forms a continuous history of the efforts of France to occupy and control this continent.

In the present volumes the nature of the subject does not permit an unbroken thread of narrative, and the unity of the book lies in its being throughout, in one form or another, an illustration of the singularly contrasted characters and methods of the rival claimants to North America.

Like the rest of the series, this work is founded on original documents. The statements of secondary writers have been accepted only when found to conform to the evidence of contemporaries, whose writings have been sifted and collated with the greatest care. As extremists on each side have charged me with favoring the other, I hope I have been unfair to neither.

The manuscript material collected for the preparation of the series now complete forms about seventy volumes, most of them folios. These have been given by me from time to time to the Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose library they now are, open to the examination of those interested in the subjects of which they treat. The collection was begun forty-five years ago, and its formation has been exceedingly slow, having been retarded by difficulties which seemed insurmountable, and for years were so in fact. Hence the completion of the series has required twice the time that would have sufficed under less unfavorable conditions.

BOSTON, March 26, 1892

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