two rascals of deputies whom you sent me will not soon recover from the
fright I gave them, notwithstanding the emollient I administered after
my reprimand; and since I told them that they were indebted to you for
not being allowed to rot in a dungeon, they have promised me to comply
with your wishes."[252]

[Footnote 250: _Pichon to Captain Scott, 14 Oct. 1754_, in _Public
Documents of Nova Scotia_, 229.]

[Footnote 251: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 223, 224, 226, 227,
238.]

[Footnote 252: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 239.]

An entire heartlessness marked the dealings of the French authorities
with the Acadians. They were treated as mere tools of policy, to be
used, broken, and flung away. Yet, in using them, the sole condition of
their efficiency was neglected. The French Government, cheated of
enormous sums by its own ravenous agents, grudged the cost of sending a
single regiment to the Acadian border. Thus unsupported, the Acadians
remained in fear and vacillation, aiding the French but feebly, though a
ceaseless annoyance and menace to the English.

This was the state of affairs at Beausejour while Shirley and Lawrence
were planning its destruction. Lawrence had empowered his agent,
Monckton, to draw without limit on two Boston merchants, Apthorp and
Hancock. Shirley, as commander-in-chief of the province of
Massachusetts, commissioned John Winslow to raise two thousand
volunteers. Winslow was sprung from the early governors of Plymouth
colony; but, though well-born, he was ill-educated, which did not
prevent him from being both popular and influential. He had strong
military inclinations, had led a company of his own raising in the
luckless attack on Carthagena, had commanded the force sent in the
preceding summer to occupy the Kennebec, and on various other occasions
had left his Marshfield farm to serve his country. The men enlisted
readily at his call, and were formed into a regiment, of which Shirley
made himself the nominal colonel. It had two battalions, of which
Winslow, as lieutenant-colonel, commanded the first, and George Scott
the second, both under the orders of Monckton. Country villages far and
near, from the western borders of the Connecticut to uttermost Cape Cod,
lent soldiers to the new regiment. The muster-rolls preserve their
names, vocations, birthplaces, and abode. Obadiah, Nehemiah, Jedediah,
Jonathan, Ebenezer, Joshua, and the like Old Testament names abound upon
the li