CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes

Volume 8

THE GREAT FORTRESS
A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760

By WILLIAM WOOD
TORONTO, 1915




PREFACE

Louisbourg was no mere isolated stronghold which could
be lost or won without affecting the wider issues of
oversea dominion. On the contrary, it was a necessary
link in the chain of waterside posts which connected
France with America by way of the Atlantic, the St
Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. But since
the chain itself and all its other links, and even the
peculiar relation of Louisbourg to the Acadians and the
Conquest, have been fully described elsewhere in the
Chronicles of Canada, the present volume only tries to
tell the purely individual tale. Strange to say, this
tale seems never to have been told before; at least, not
as one continuous whole. Of course, each siege has been