And now comes the strangest part of the story. We get quite accustomed to thinking of the American colonies as the football of European diplomacy, our reading of history has fully prepared us for that: but we are not prepared to find events in the New World actually shaping the course of those in the Old. In a word, England lost the battle in Europe, but won it in America. France was confounded at seeing the key to Canada in the hands of the enemy she had just beaten. England and France were like two duellists who have had a scuffle, in the course of which they have exchanged weapons. Instead of dictating terms, France had to compromise matters. For the sake of preserving her colonial possessions, she now had to give up her dear-bought conquests on the continent of Europe. Hostilities were suspended. All the belligerents agreed to restore what they had taken from each other, and cry quits; but it is plain that France would never have consented to such a settlement at a time when her adversaries were so badly crippled, when all England was in a ferment, and she hurrying back her troops from Holland in order to put down rebellion at home, thus leaving the coalition of which she was the head to stand or fall without her. France would not have stayed her victorious march, we think, under such circumstances as these, unless the nation’s attention had been forcibly recalled to the gravity of the situation in America.

In some respects this episode of history recalls the story of the mailed giant, armed to the teeth, and of the stripling with his sling.

As all the conquests of this war were restored by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Cape Breton went to France again.

Thus had New England made herself felt across the Atlantic by an exhibition of power, as unlooked-for as it was suggestive to thoughtful men. To some it was merely like that put forth by the infant Hercules, in his cradle. But to England, the unnatural mother, it was a notice that the child she had neglected was coming to manhood, ere long to claim a voice in the disposal of its own affairs.

To New England herself the consequences of her great exploit were very marked. The martial spirit was revived. In the trenches of Louisburg was the training-school for the future captains of the republic. Louisburg became a watchword and a tradition to a people intensely proud of their traditions. Not only had they made themselves felt across the ocean, but they now first awoke to a better knowledge of their own resources, their own capabilities, their own place in the empire, and here began the growth of that independent spirit which, but for the prompt seizure of a golden opportunity, might have lain dormant for years. Probably it would be too much to say that the taking of Louisburg opened the eyes of discerning men to the possibility of a great empire in the West; yet, if we are to look about us for underlying causes, we know not where else to find a single event so likely to give birth to speculative discussion, or a new and enlarged direction in the treatment of public concerns. What had been done would always be pointed to as evidence of what might be done again. So we have considered the taking of Louisburg, in so far as the colonies were concerned, as the event of its epoch.[26]

Nor would these discussions be any the less likely to arise, or to grow any the less threatening to the future of crown and colony, when it became known that to balance her accounts with other powers England had handed over Cape Breton to France again, thus putting in her hand the very weapon that New England had just wrested from her, as the pledge to her own security. The work was all undone with a stroke of the pen. The colonies were still to be the football of European politics.

Nobody in the colonies supposed this would be the reward of their sacrifices—that they should be deliberately sold by the home government, or that France, after being once disarmed, would be quietly told to go on strengthening her American Gibraltar as much as she liked. Yet this was what really happened, notwithstanding the Duke of Newcastle’s bombastic declaration that “if France was master of Portsmouth, he would hang the man who should give up Cape Breton in exchange for it.”

King George, who was in Hanover when he heard of the capture of Louisburg, sent word to Pepperell that he would be made a baronet, thus distinguishing him as the proper chief of the expedition. This distinction, which really made Pepperell the first colonist of his time, was nobly won and worthily worn. After four years of importunity the colonies succeeded in getting their actual expenses reimbursed to them, which was certainly no more than their dues, considering that they had been fighting the battles of the mother country.[27]

Warren was made an admiral. The navy came in for a large amount of prize money, obtained from ships that were decoyed into Louisburg after it fell, to the exclusion of the army.[28] This disposition of the spoils was highly resented by the army, who very justly alleged that, while the success of the army without the fleet might be open to debate, there could be no question whatever of the fleet’s inability to take Louisburg without the army.

THE END