Louisbourg, Canada Summary

Beginning work in 1719, the French constructed the coastal fortress of LOUISBOURG, 37km southeast of Sydney, to guard the Atlantic approaches to New France and salvage their imperial honour after the humiliation of the Treaty of Utrecht. The result was a staggeringly ostentatious stronghold covering a hundred acres and encircled by ten-metre-high stone walls; it took so long to build and was so expensive that Louis XV said he was expecting its towers to rise over the Paris horizon. However, Louisbourg was wildly ill-conceived: the humid weather stopped the mortar from drying, the fort was overlooked by a score of hillocks, and developments in gunnery had already made high stone walls an ineffective means of defence. As Charles Lawrence, the British governor, confirmed, “the general design of the fortifications is exceedingly bad and the workmanship worse executed and so disadvantageously situated that … it will never answer the charge or trouble”. And so it proved: Louisbourg was only attacked twice, but it was captured on both occasions, the second time by the celebra-ted British commander, James Wolfe, on his way to Québec in 1758.