Breton was founded at the entrance to the bay which had
long been known as English Harbour. Everything that
rechristening could do, however, was done to make Cape
Breton French. Not only was English Harbour now called
Louisbourg, but St Peter's became Port Toulouse, St Anne's
became Port Dauphin, and the whole island itself was
solemnly christened Ile Royale.

The shores of the St Lawrence up to Quebec and Montreal
were as entirely French as the islands in the Gulf. But
Acadia, which used to form the connection by land between
Cape Breton and Canada, had now become a British possession
inhabited by the so-called 'neutral French.' These
Acadians, few in numbers and quite unorganized, were
drawn in opposite directions, on the one hand by their
French proclivities, on the other by their rooted affection
for their own farms. Unlike the French Newfoundlanders,
who came in a body from Plaisance (now Placentia), the
Acadians preferred to stay at home. In 1717 an effort
was made to bring some of them into Louisbourg. But it
only succeeded in attracting the merest handful. On the
whole, the French authorities preferred leaving the
Acadians as they were, in case a change in the fortunes
of war might bring them once more under the fleurs-de-lis,
when the connection by land between Quebec and the sea
would again be complete. A plan for promoting the
immigration of the Irish Roman Catholics living near Cape
Breton never got beyond the stage of official memoranda.
Thus the population of the new capital consisted only of
government employees, French fishermen from Newfoundland