admitted giving assistance to the French, but produced
an order from the Sieur du Vivier threatening them with
punishment at the hands of the Indians if they refused.

In May of the following year (1745) a party of Canadians
and Indians, under the raider Marin, invested Annapolis.
Again the Acadians refused to take up arms and again
assisted the invaders with supplies. By the end of the
month, however, Marin and his raiders had vanished and
the garrison at Annapolis saw them no more. They had been
urgently summoned by the governor of Ile Royale to come
to his assistance, for Louisbourg was even then in dire
peril. An army of New Englanders under Pepperrell,
supported by a squadron of the British Navy under Warren,
had in fact laid siege to the fortress in the same month.
[Footnote: See The Great Fortress in this Series, chap.
ii.] But Marin's raiders could render no effective service.
On the forty-ninth day of the siege Louisbourg surrendered
to the English, [Footnote: June 17, Old Style, June 28,
New Style, 1745. The English at this time still used the
Old Style Julian calendar, while the French used the
Gregorian, New Style. Hence some of the disagreement in
respect to dates which we find in the various accounts
of this period.] and shortly afterwards the entire French
population, civil and military, among them many Acadians,
were transported to France.

The fall of Louisbourg and the removal of the inhabitants
alarmed the French authorities, who now entertained fears
for the safety of Canada and determined to take steps