after incredible
hardship, made their way back to Acadia, where, after the peace, they
remained unmolested, and, with those who had escaped seizure, became the
progenitors of the present Acadians, now settled in various parts of the
British maritime provinces, notably at Madawaska, on the upper St. John,
and at Clare, in Nova Scotia. Others were sent from Virginia to England;
and others again, after the complete conquest of the country, found
refuge in France.

In one particular the authors of the deportation were disappointed in
its results. They had hoped to substitute a loyal population for a
disaffected one; but they failed for some time to find settlers for the
vacated lands. The Massachusetts soldiers, to whom they were offered,
would not stay in the province; and it was not till five years later
that families of British stock began to occupy the waste fields of the
Acadians. This goes far to show that a longing to become their heirs had
not, as has been alleged, any considerable part in the motives for their
removal.

New England humanitarianism, melting into sentimentality at a tale of
woe, has been unjust to its own. Whatever judgment may be passed on the
cruel measure of wholesale expatriation, it was not put in execution
till every resource of patience and persuasion had been tried in vain.
The agents of the French Court, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, had
made some act of force a necessity. We have seen by what vile practices
they produced in Acadia a state of things intolerable, and impossible of
continuance. They conjured up the tempest; and when it burst on the
heads of the unhappy people, they gave no help. The Government of Louis
XV. began with making the Acadians its tools, and ended with making them
its victims.[289]

[Footnote 289: It may not be remembered that the predecessor of Louis
XV., without the slightest provocation or the pretence of any, gave
orders that the whole Protestant population of the colony of New York,
amounting to about eighteen thousand, should be seized, despoiled of
their property, placed on board his ships and dispersed among the other
British colonies in such a way that they could not reunite. Want of
power alone prevented the execution of the order.]

Chapter 9

1755

Dieskau

The next stroke of the campaign was to be the capture of Crown Point,
that dangerous neighbor which, for a quarter of a century, had
threatened the northern colonies. Shirley,