roclaimed in his turn that all Acadians who had
at any time sworn fidelity to the King of England, and who should be
found in arms against him, would be treated as criminals.[117] Thus were
these unfortunates ground between the upper and nether millstones. Le
Loutre replied to this proclamation of Lawrence by a letter in which he
outdid himself. He declared that any of the inhabitants who had crossed
to the French side of the line, and who should presume to return to the
English, would be treated as enemies by his Micmacs; and in the name of
these, his Indian adherents, he demanded that the entire eastern half of
the Acadian peninsula, including the ground on which Fort Lawrence
stood, should be at once made over to their sole use and sovereign
ownership,[118]--"which being read and considered," says the record of
the Halifax Council, "the contents appeared too insolent and absurd to
be answered."

[Footnote 115: _Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]

[Footnote 116: _Ordonnance du 12 Avril, 1751_.]

[Footnote 117: _Ecrit donne aux Habitants refugies a Beausejour, 10
Aout, 1754_.]

[Footnote 118: _Copie de la Lettre de M. l'Abbe Le Loutre, Pretre
Missionnaire des Sauvages de l'Accadie, a M. Lawrence a Halifax, 26
Aout, 1754_. There is a translation in _Public Documents of Nova
Scotia_.]

The number of Acadians who had crossed the line and were collected about
Beausejour was now large. Their countrymen of Chipody began to find them
a burden, and they lived chiefly on Government rations. Le Loutre had
obtained fifty thousand livres from the Court in order to dike in, for
their use, the fertile marshes of Memeramcook; but the relief was
distant, and the misery pressing. They complained that they had been
lured over the line by false assurances, and they applied secretly to
the English authorities to learn if they would be allowed to return to
their homes. The answer was that they might do so with full enjoyment of
religion and property, if they would take a simple oath of fidelity and
loyalty to the King of Great Britain, qualified by an oral intimation
that they would not be required for the present to bear arms.[119] When
Le Loutre heard this, he mounted the pulpit, broke into fierce
invectives, threatened the terrified people with excommunication, and
preached himself into a state of exhaustion.[120] The military
commandant at Beausejour used gentler means of prevention; and the
Acadians, unused for generations to