i.

Vaudreuil, before the siege, sent a reinforcement to Subercase, who, by
a strange infatuation, refused it. _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 853.

CHAPTER VIII.

1710, 1711.

WALKER'S EXPEDITION.

Scheme of La Ronde Denys.--Boston warned against British
Designs.--Boston to be ruined.--Plans of the Ministry.--Canada
doomed.--British Troops at Boston.--The Colonists denounced.--The
Fleet sails for Quebec.--Forebodings of the Admiral.--Storm and
Wreck.--Timid Commanders.--Retreat.--Joyful News for Canada.--Pious
Exultation.--Fanciful Stories.--Walker Disgraced.

Military aid from Old England to New, promised in one year and actually
given in the next, was a fact too novel and surprising to escape the
notice either of friends or of foes.

The latter drew strange conclusions from it. Two Irish deserters from an
English station in Newfoundland appeared at the French post of Placentia
full of stories of British and provincial armaments against Canada. On
this, an idea seized the French commandant, Costebelle, and he hastened
to make it known to the colonial minister. It was to the effect that the
aim of England was not so much to conquer the French colonies as to
reduce her own to submission, especially Massachusetts,--a kind of
republic which has never willingly accepted a governor from its
king.[147] In sending ships and soldiers to the "Bastonnais" under
pretence of helping them to conquer their French neighbors, Costebelle
is sure that England only means to bring them to a dutiful subjection.
"I do not think," he writes on another occasion, "that they are so blind
as not to see that they will insensibly be brought under the yoke of the
Parliament of Old England; but by the cruelties that the Canadians and
Indians exercise in continual incursions upon their lands, I judge that
they would rather be delivered from the inhumanity of such neighbors
than preserve all the former powers of their little republic."[148] He
thinks, however, that the design of England ought to be strongly
represented to the Council at Boston, and that M. de la Ronde Denys will
be a good man to do it, as he speaks English, has lived in Boston, and
has many acquaintances there.[149]

The minister, Ponchartrain, was struck by Costebelle's suggestion, and
wrote both to him and to Vaudreuil in high approval of it. To Vaudreuil
he says: "Monsieur de Costebelle has informed me that the chief object
of the armament made by the English last year w