CHAPTER IV

LOST FOR EVER
1758

The ten years of the second French regime in Louisbourg
were divided into very different halves. During the first
five years, from 1749 to 1753, the mighty rivals were as
much at peace, all over their conflicting frontiers, as
they ever had been in the past. But from 1754 to 1758 a
great and, this time, a decisive war kept drawing
continually nearer, until its strangling coils at last
crushed Louisbourg to death.

Three significant events marked 1749, the first of the
five peaceful years. Louisbourg was handed over to its
new French garrison; the British founded Halifax; and
the Imperial government indemnified New England in full
for the siege of 1745. Halifax was intended partly as a
counterpoise to Louisbourg, and partly as a place-d'armes
for one of the two local footholds of British sea-power,
Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which, between them, narrowed
the French line of communication with Canada into a single
precarious strait. The New England indemnity was meant,
in the first instance, to be a payment for service done.
But it was also intended to soften colonial resentment