Anatomy of a Naval Disaster: The 1746 French Expedition to North America 9780773565531

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Anatomy of a Naval Disaster: The 1746 French Naval Expedition to North America

Intended as a riposte to the Anglo-American capture of Louisbourg the year before, the so-called d'Enville expedition set out in 1746 to secure Canada, recapture Acadia and Louisbourg, and ravage the New England coast as far south as Boston. Many of the sixty-four vessels involved did not return, and estimates of the dead reached as high as eight thousand. Yet the enemy was never met in battle. James Pritchard's account of this naval fiasco sheds new light on the extent of the tragedy and raises questions about the role and effectiveness of naval power during the intercolonial wars of the mid-eighteenth century. Pritchard describes the domestic and international political circumstances that gave rise to the French expedition, outlining strategy and politics in the context of colonial defence and continental ambition, and reconstructs the events that contributed to the failure of the expedition - human and institutional weakness, weather, spoiled provisions, disease, and the death of the commanding admiral. Anatomy of a Naval Disaster exposes the ambitions and frailties of men, the arbitrariness of success, and the limits of power in the eighteenth century. JAMES PRITCHARD is professor of history, Queen's University.

FRONTISPIECE

Jean-Baptisle-Louis-Fredmc de La Rochefoucauld de Roye, due d 'Knville, attributed to F. de Troy.

Anatomy of a Naval Disaster The 1746 French Naval Expedition to North America JAMES PRITCHARD

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1995 ISBN 0-7735-1325-6

Legal deposit fourth quarter 1995 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the School of Graduate Studies and Research and the Department of History of Queen's University. McGill-Queen's University Press is grateful to the Canada Council for support of its publication program.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Pritchard, James S., 1939Anatomy of a naval disaster : the 1746 French naval expedition to North America Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1325-6 1. France - History, Naval - i8th century. 2. France - History - Louis XV, 1715-1774. 3. La Rochefoucauld de Roye, Jean-Baptiste-LouisFrederic de, due d'Anville, 1709-1746. 4. Canada History - 1713-1763 (New France). 5. United States - History - King George's War, 1744—1748 Naval operations, French. I. Title. DC52.P74 1995 944'.034 095-900455-6 Typeset in Palatino 10/12 by Caractera production graphique, Quebec City

For Suzanne, Laura, and Michael

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We may, as historians, pronounce inevitable the victory of those who are going to win, but this is not very illuminating. Norman Hampson, The Enlightenment (1968) 31 The campaign that I just made ... will be unique in the annals of the navy by the mishaps of all kinds, which continually thwarted us during its course. Jean-Baptiste Darain, "Relation d'un voyage fait sur mer en 1'annee 1746" It seems now to be a struggle between the French and us, who shall be the masters of this continent. Rear-Admiral Peter Warren, 23 Oct. [o.s.] 1746

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Contents

Tables and Maps xi Acknowledgments

xiii

Dates, Weights, Measures, and Currency xv Introduction 3 1 Policy and Ambition: Background to a Naval Expedition 14 2 Plans, Preparations, and Conflict 36 3 Delays and Departures

67

4 The Enterprise of a Passage 96 5 Tragedy at Chibouctou 126 6 The Lost Shepherds

145

7 La Jonquiere Takes Command

163

8 The Final Agony 194 Epilogue 219 Appendix: Ships and Men of the Expedition 231 Notes 235 Bibliography 285 Index 311

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Tables and Maps

TABLES

2.1 French naval strength in 1746 39 2.2 Artillery train equipment required for the expedition 45 2.3 Troop transports chartered for the expedition, January 1746 53 3.1 Provisions embarked in Le Mars for crew of 400, for four months, not including supplement for too troops 70 3.2 Provisions for the sick embarked in Le Mars 71 3.3 Cannons, munitions, and ordnance stores on board L'Ardent 72

3.4 Authorized crews for the warships that departed France in 1746 74 3.5 Warships and troopships carrying the naval battalion and Ponthieu Infantry Regiment 87 3.6 Troop transports departed Port Louis 15 May 1746, carrying the Saumur battalion 88 3.7 Troop transports departed Port Louis 23 May 1746, carrying the Fontenay-le-Comte battalion 88 3.8 Officers and men of the expeditionary landing force commanded by Brigadier Meric, 1746 89 4.1 Approximate number of seamen and soldiers in the expedition 100 6.1 Ships and men that failed to reach Chibouctou 157 6.2 Mortality on board Le Mars to 22 October 1746 158

xii Tables and Maps

6.3 Estimated losses on board ships that returned to France after September 1746 160 6.4 Mortality rates among French seamen, 1725-34 162 7.1 Dead, unfit, and convalescent at Chibouctou, 15 October 1746 177 7.2 Dead and sick among infantry of the line at Chibouctou 180 7.3 Dead, unfit, and convalescent in seven storeships at Chibouctou, 15 October 1746 181 7.4 Dead and unfit (excluding officers) on board 16 troopships 182 7.5 Dead, unfit, and convalescent in 12 warships at Chibouctou, October 1746 183 7.6 Ships and troops re-embarked for assault on Annapolis Royal 187 7.7 Troopships converted to hospital ships 189 MAPS 2.1 3.1 4.1 4.2

The Atlantic coast of France 38 Rochefort and the Aix roads 85 The North Atlantic winds 97 Chibouctou (Halifax harbour and Bedford basin), by Chabert de Cogolin, 1746 109 5.1 Accadia, by Bellin, 1744 127 7.1 Chart of the track of Conflans's squadron between Nova Scotia and Sable Island, from 28 September to 13 October 1746 168

Acknowledgments

It is a great pleasure to thank many colleagues, friends, and students who assisted me in the preparation of this monograph. I am particularly grateful to J.F. Bosher, William J. Eccles, George A. Rawlyk, and Ian K. Steele, who read the entire manuscript and offered constructive criticism and warm encouragement. Ian Steele suggested the final version of the title. Many thanks are also due to the personnel of archives and libraries in France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, who were always helpful. They answered requests with dispatch and often suggested new sources unknown to me. I am especially beholden to Dr Roger J.B. Knight, who offered friendship along with assistance and made my stay at Greenwich something to be remembered and treasured. I also thank Martin Nicolai, Thomas Wein, and Bill Wicken, young scholars who drew my attention to original material that I would not otherwise have seen, gave their time, and cheerfully shared their specialized knowledge. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which awarded me a research grant in 1988 and allowed me to continue to draw on the residue in recent years to complete the project. I also thank the principal of Queen's University, who granted me a sabbatical leave in 1988-89 that enabled me to carry out much of the primary research. The Principal's Advisory Research Committee and the university's School of Graduate Studies and Research provided some additional funds that aided me to tidy up the manuscript at the end and assisted

xiv Acknowledgments

its publication. The Trustees of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England, and officials at the Musee de la Marine, Paris, the National Archives of Canada, the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Park, Canadian Parks Service, and The New York Historical Society, New York City, have kindly given me permission to publish the illustrations that accompany the text. I also thank the editors of Acadiensis Press for permission to use previously published material. I am greatly indebted to Ross Hough of the Cartographic Division, Department of Geography, Queen's University, for preparing the maps. He transformed my sometimes vague notions of what I thought was needed into valuable aids to comprehension. I also owe Sharon Judd a debt of gratitude for taking on the manuscript at the beginning and seeing it through to the end, preparing drafts of chapters and the final copy with great enthusiasm and care. PICTURE

CREDITS

The following institutions kindly gave me permission to reproduce illustrations used in this book: Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Park, Canadian Parks Service: plate 13 Musee de la Marine (MM), Paris: plates i (Ph. 70,712), 3 (Ph. 60,2277 14), 4 (Ph. 7,057), 5 (Ph. 7,379), and 7 (Ph. 7,288) National Archives of Canada (NA): frontispiece and plate 12 (Ace. 1932 417) National Maritime Museum (NMM), Greenwich: Jacket illustration (Neg. No. 85) and plates 2 (No. 1,044), 6 (No. 6,001), 8 (No. 2,401), and 10 (No. A9,g84) The New York Historical Society (NYHS): plate 11 (Neg. No. 26,991)

Dates, Weights, Measures, and Currency

I have adjusted dates throughout the text to conform with the Gregorian calendar, which the French, but not the English, were using in 1746. Contemporary English and American dates, still based on the Julian calendar, fell 11 days earlier than their French equivalents, and each year commenced on 25 March. These dates have been indicated as Old Style [o.s.] in the Notes. French sailors, like their English counterparts, began the day at noon, twelve hours before the civil day ashore. Thus the afternoon preceded the forenoon of the nautical day. Sometimes, however, French navigation journals referred to the p.m. as yesterday (hier), providing a useful reminder that the naval afternoon of one day is the preceding p.m. of the civil day. In order to reduce confusion, I have observed the civil day in the text. The French livre weight of 489.5 grams was about 8 per cent heavier than the English pound of 453.5 grams. The French quintal, like the English hundredweight, represents a unit of 100 pounds in its own system. "Ton" refers to the French tonneau de mer of 2,000 livres weight, 979 kilograms, or 2,159 Ibs English. In 1681, its volume equivalent, the freight ton, was fixed at 42 cubic feet (1.44 cubic metres), although a ton weight of Bordeaux wine (913 litres) does not quite fill 28 French cubic feet of space. The difference appears to arise from a ship's load being two-thirds its capacity to carry the weight put into it. The French freight ton was much larger than the English freight ton of 40 English cubic feet (1.13 cubic metres), and I have made no attempt to adjust the different measures. Ship tons or tons

xvi Dates, Weights, Measures, and Currency

burden are a measure of the volume of a hull that possesses an extremely irregular shape. French shipwrights obtained a result, but, just as Builders Measure in England, it was not a measure of capacity and has been ignored herein. The tonneau de mer appears to include the displacement of a ship's hull when empty and was used as a measure of capacity. In the eighteenth century, French seamen reckoned distance in marine leagues, and whether they are defined as containing 2,853 French toises (i toise = 1.949 metres) or 3 nautical miles, each of 6,080 English feet (i English foot = 0.305 metres), both were equivalent to three minutes of latitude or three minutes of a great circle. One degree of latitude is equivalent to 20 leagues - approximately 112 kilometres, or 69 statute miles. The preservation of the older maritime terminology in the text reminds us that all distances at sea were estimates; restating them in modern form as so many miles or kilometres introduces a false notion of non-existent precision. French pilots and navigators used the mariner's compass of 32 points but referred to the final 16 points as being one-quarter of the angular distance between the cardinal and ordinal points. Rather than state a course or bearing as sw by s, they gave the same as sw 1/4 s. When employed, the contemporary journal entries have been kept. The livre tournois (l.t.), was the French money of account - 23 livres tournois was roughly equivalent to an English pound sterling. For convenience, the reader can consider a livre tournois as having somewhat less value than an English shilling.

Capture of HMS Northumberland, 70 guns, by Le Mars, 64 guns, 18 May 1744. At rear, Le Content, 60 guns. Engraving by C. Bouvier after L. Garnery.

Le Northumberland: internal arrangements and gun decks when rebuilt in 1743.

A stern view of Le Mercure, 60 guns, built 1697. The oldest ship in the French navy carried only 24 guns while serving as the expedition's hospital in 1746.

The prow of LVlrgorwzttfe, shown c. 1720, one of the expedition's fireshipscum-troopships.

The stern and quarter galleries of L'Alcide, 64 guns, built 1744. Signatures: the naval minister, Maurepas, and the draftsman, Caffierie.

L'Alcide, with vertical stem and stern characteristic of French ships of the line.

Ornamentation of the stern, quarter galleries, and prow of La Renommee, one of the French navy's first flush-decked, 3O-gun frigates. Built at Brest by Blaise Ollivier in 1744, it became the workhorse of the expedition.

Unlike British frigates, La Renommee carried no broadside guns forward of the foremast. The fineness of her lines forward provided insufficient buoyancy, and the long, light hull could not stand heavy weights at the extremities.

Uniforms worn by a naval officer and seaman, naval infrantrymen, troops of the line, and men in the company of bombardiers and gunners who sailed in the expedition. Line drawings after Eugene Leliepvre.

'The Nottingham Captain Saumarez takes the Mars." Although the encounter occurred in 1746, the print, by Laurie and Whitde, was published 12 May 1794 as propaganda during another Anglo-French war.

Engagement near Guadeloupe of an American privateer brig Greyhound with La Fleury and a French privateer sloop, 12 November [o.s.] 1746. The foretopmast was lost in the storm three weeks earlier; note the jury-rigged bowsprit sail. This may be the only contemporary illustration of a merchantman built at Quebec during the French regime. Engraving by H. Dawkins after J. Haviland.

Remains of the due d'Enville excavated at Louisbourg, June 1932, and reburied in the royal chapel of the restored fortress.

Sic transit gloria. The skull of due d'Enville, clearly showing surgeonmajor Duval's trepanation during his post-mortem examination. The small, triangular patch above "No. 5" marks the attachment of the tumour in the skull's interior. Note two fillings and artificial tooth.

Anatomy of a Naval Disaster: The 1746 French Naval Expedition to North America

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Introduction

Shortly after noon on 29 November 1746, a storm-battered French frigate made landfall on the south coast of Brittany. After seven months at sea and almost out of victuals, she had a hull that was foul, and her remaining crew members were very sickly. Her captain, lieutenant de vaisseau Guy-Francois Coetnempren de Kersaint, and crew had sailed alone from Chibouctou (today Halifax) some five weeks earlier. Since they had set course from Sable Island, fresh gales had driven her southeastward, and the ship's company sighted the island of Santa Maria in the Azores before the captain altered course northeastward toward France. The ship entered the Bay of Biscay in the latitude of Cape Ortegal and made for Brest. In sight of France, 15 leagues off Penmanec'h, La Renommee, 30 guns, ran straight into a British battle squadron under the command of Vice-Admiral George Anson, who was searching for her. Now she was being chased by 13 men of war.1 At two o'clock in the afternoon, a freshly careened, well-armed British frigate overhauled her and opened fire. After so many months at sea, with more than half of her original crew dead or unfit and with many sick and dying, La Renommee was in no shape to resist. Captain de Kersaint altered course and ran toward land. Through the afternoon and into the evening, the two ships ran on, exchanging gunfire while steering southeast toward He de Groix. At dawn the next day, a great ship of 70 guns joined the fight, and during the engagement La Renommee lost her maintopmast. Crippled and about to be boarded, she reached the protection of Groix fortress, whose

4 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

guns opened up, forcing two enemy third-rates to veer away. With three dead and 30 to 40 wounded on board, her hull, sails, and rigging riddled with ball and case-shot, the disabled frigate made her way slowly across the final few miles that separated the island from the mainland and at 11 a.m. on 30 November anchored in the harbour of Port Louis. Captain de Kersaint bore grim news, the first reliable report to arrive, that France's riposte to the Anglo-American victory at Louisbourg the previous year had ended in abject failure. The expedition's commander was dead, together with an estimated 3,000 men, and many more sick and dying were in the ships straggling home behind La Renommee.2 More than five months earlier, a large fleet of 45 troop transports, storeships, and merchantmen, escorted by ten ships of the line, a hospital, three frigates, and two corvettes, had set sail with 3,500 infantrymen and an artillery train on a mission to defend French possessions in America. In all, nearly 11,000 men embarked in over 25,000 tons of shipping. Great expectations accompanied their departure. Canada would be secured, Louisbourg recaptured, Acadia retaken, and the coast of New England ravaged as far south as Boston, perhaps further. But now, all the bright hopes of spring lay in ruins. Not a single French military objective had been achieved. Thousands of soldiers and sailors were dead, and the final agonies remained to be endured. During the next two weeks, singly and in small groups, the remnants of the shattered fleet reached France bearing their forlorn cargoes of sick and dying men. Some never reached home, for British warships picked off half a dozen returning ships, chiefly small victuallers and storeships, but including also a troopship and the hospital.3 Worse fates awaited some who reached France. By 12 December, 14 ships had anchored at Port Louis and more than 1,000 sick and dying overflowed the temporary hospitals hastily set up in town to receive them, while hundreds more remained on board with nowhere to go before Le Boree, 64 guns, reached port. Despite a warning from the naval commandant that Port Louis's small harbour was not fit to receive great ships owing to the strong tides and high winds, the ship's pilot brought the third-rate into the harbour. Le Boree arrived at high tide and anchored close to a sandbank called "le Turc." At 11 p.m., after dragging her anchors at low tide, the ship grounded and canted to leeward. Her cannons, still run out and secured only by small tackle, broke free and burst through the ship's hull. The masts collapsed, causing devastation, and 20 or 30 of the sick on board drowned.4 No one knows how many men died during the expedition; some estimates range as high as 8,ooo.5 So great was the calamity that naval

5 Introduction

authorities hastened to wind up its affairs and bury quickly and effectively the memory of its existence. By the end of December, only a few minor matters remained to be attended to. The naval minister found no fault with anyone. No inquiry was ever held into the circumstances of the expedition. More curious still, virtually no records of the expedition exist in the naval archives. More evidence has been located in the army archives.6 Officials in the ministry of marine never mentioned the losses and regarded the preservation of the squadron and its return to France as "a very great blessing."7 Life in Louis xv's navy simply picked up and continued as if the expedition had never occurred. Yet the d'Enville expedition, so named after its late, unlamented commander, Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Frederic de la Rochefoucauld de Roye, due d'Enville, represented the first and largest French attempt to mount a combined operation overseas before the American War of Independence. It was also the largest French naval expedition mounted during the War of the Austrian Succession. Historians who have not ignored the expedition altogether - as did Alfred Thayer Mahan - have always treated it obliquely. Not surprising, many errors crept into the various accounts and have been repeated in some cases for more than two centuries. Voltaire, the first to write about the subject, published an official version of events. As royal historiographer from 1745, he requested and received a ministerial account of important occurrences during the war.8 But his analysis appeared 22 years later, in chapter 28 of his Precis du siecle de Louis XV. Primarily concerned to present an appropriate, wellpolished obituary for the commander, Voltaire described d'Enville as a man of great courage, civility, and sweetness of manner, of the kind that the French alone preserve amid the coarseness that normally attaches to naval service. D'Enville's spiritual strength, however, was not matched by his physique, and he died of sickness on a wilderness shore after seeing his fleet scattered by storms.9 Voltaire's account confirms the absence of any recrimination or blame following the disaster, which helps to explain the apparent lack of interest in the affair. But why this should have been the case remains to be explained. Early English accounts contain a mixture of error and fact that has continued since the middle of the eighteenth century. Thus Robert Beatson (1790) and John Charnock (1800) incorrectly reported many errors of fact that have often been repeated unacknowledged down to the present day, while their much more interesting general conclusions have been virtually ignored.10 T.C. Haliburton repeated several errors and added more of his own in his history of Nova Scotia,

6 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

published in 1829." Beamish Murdock's history of the province, which appeared in the i86os, briefly discussed the expedition and used some Anglo-American sources.12 The best English-language account is by Francis Parkman, who devoted a chapter to the due d'Enville in the penultimate volume (1892) of his history of France in North America.13 Parkman employed new sources to present the most dramatic narrative of the expedition ever written. But he relied almost entirely on a single account, written by an anonymous army captain, and much of the information is at second and third hand. Parkman added to the story from eyewitness accounts left by American prisoners of the French who were present in Nova Scotia.14 His account, too, contained errors, but his prose remains so powerful that all subsequent versions are in some way indebted to the great New England historian.15 French accounts written during the nineteenth century fall into two camps - the political and the moral. According to naval accounts, chief blame for the disaster must be laid at the feet of a cheese-paring government that refused to supply adequate resources owing to a lack of royal foresight and blind indifference to the fate of France's North American possessions.16 Principal responsibility for this state of affairs is frequently attributed to the secretary of state and minister of the navy during the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the comte de Maurepas, known largely for his incompetence and complacency.17 The Canadian historian Frangois-Xavier Garneau put an interesting New-World twist on this view, seeing in the failure of the French naval expedition confirmation of the decline of metropolitan France, its government institutions, and its people, in contrast to sturdy colonists who retained the military virtues of an older, hard-working, disciplined, and courageous mother country.18 This view of eighteenth-century moral and political decadence did not originate with a Canadian and was most bitterly expressed by a Frenchman, Franc.ois-Edme Rameau de Saint-Pere, who described French naval officers in the expedition as dissolute courtiers, characterized chiefly by ineptitude and moral cowardice. Summing up their conduct during the expedition to Nova Scotia, he wrote, "never has so much inability been joined to so much self-conceit."19 During the present century, the casual treatment of the naval expedition has led to its being consigned to part of the background of other histories. In 1902, G. Lacour-Gayet published a major study of the French navy under Louis xv. Though acknowledging the halfcentury between 1713 and 1763 as being notable for "la decadence de notre marine," Lacour-Gayet sought most of all to revise earlier

7 Introduction

explanations of that state of affairs - first, by arguing that the navy's evil days were owed to external factors in the persons of four men: the regent, Cardinal Dubois, the due de Bourbon, and Cardinal de Fleury; and second, by presenting a revised view of the comte de Maurepas, as a leader, innovator, reformer of the navy, and promoter of French maritime affairs.20 Though not the earliest to present a revised, more favourable view of Maurepas, Lacour-Gayet's heavily didactic work became authoritative.21 His discussion of the Nova Scotia expedition contains little beyond a repetition of the official contemporary explanation, which attributed failure to misfortune. He denied earlier assertions of officers' inexperience and general decline. He employed the then-current ideology of the pro-colonial party in the Third Republic during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and attacked political leaders for their failure to recognize that French greatness lay in fully developing the navy as an instrument to promote general policy and national greatness.22 With such an interpretation and emphasis on the need for an infusion of will, there was really no need to examine the state of naval logistics, organization, and administration, to study the behaviour of individuals, or to assess the impact of domestic politics on naval affairs. This vision has largely dominated twentieth-century historiography, though a certain ambiguity remains over how such a disaster could occur during the administration of an active and enlightened naval minister. One perceptive historian drew attention to poor naval outfitting of the expedition and to the ill-will of the naval officer corps toward its commander, whose inexperience allowed it free play.23 But no one went beyond these conclusions. In keeping with the tradition of incidental treatment, Franco-Canadian friendship following the Great War principally motivated the first modern article dealing with events surrounding the expedition.24 On 4 September 1929, the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia unveiled a plaque commemorating the location of the French encampment along the western shore of Bedford Basin, where men of the French expeditionary force died during October 1746 while attempting to recuperate from the diseases attacking them.25 The French government attached some weight to this exercise in Anglo-French entente, sending the cruiser Primauguet to Halifax expressly for the September ceremony, which was attended as well by representatives of the Canadian navy and army, the French consul-general, and detachments from HMS Dispatch and HMCS Stadacona.26 The first scholarly article to deal with the expedition was based on some solid research in both army and naval archives in Paris, but, not surprising, the author claimed, as did the inscription on the newly unveiled monument, that storms and

8 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

disease were the causes of failure, and he concluded on a note of Franco-Canadian goodwill. A second article that appeared a year later may have been inspired by the first, but the comte de Chabannes - La Palice's chief aim was to exploit his collection of documents that had once belonged to the due d'Enville.27 Some of the material proved vital to the account of events. But despite new sources, the writer came to old conclusions, blaming failure on a lack of funds. He also published (1929) a few of the documents in his possession.28 But the great bulk of his papers did not come to public attention until over 30 years later, in 1962, when a unique collection of eighteenthcentury French documents, entitled "The Maurepas Papers," was offered for sale by Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc. of New York.29 Fortunately, the greatest part of this collection was purchased by Cornell University and deposited in the John M. Olin Library. Hamilton College, New York, the University of Rochester, and Ohio State University acquired some parts of the collection, but other pieces have fallen into the hands of private collectors, and their locations remain unknown. Happily, none of the materials relating to d'Enville appear to be included in the latter group. The best study of the French expeditionary force since Parkman was written about mid-century by the Canadian historian Guy Fregault. Under his deft hand, however, the expedition became a vehicle to carry forward his biography of Francois Bigot, who was appointed intendant or chief administrative officer of the expedition.30 The historian sought to show that Bigot played a major role in the preparations for the expedition and brought much-needed energy and ability in contrast to the generally lackadaisical behaviour of naval administrators in the arsenals. Although he employed his sources creatively, the only new conclusion was the rather bizarre one that Louis xv's royal instructions to the due d'Enville contained a French project to deport the Acadians of Nova Scotia.31 Clearly, in the eyes of this French-Canadian nationalist, the metropolitan French were no better than the imperialist British. Although Gustave Lanctot disagreed with Fregault's conclusion, most subsequent accounts closely follow the latter, even to the point of repeating typographical errors.32 During the last 20 years, the d'Enville expedition has all but disappeared from histories of the French navy. While E.H. Jenkins barely mentions it, attributing the disaster to the elements and disease, Etienne Taillemite ignores it in favour of stressing the navy's effort to protect overseas commerce during the War of the Austrian Succession.33 A few recent articles are distinctly popular, incomplete, and based largely on well-known sources.34 Nearly two and a half centuries after the expedition, it appears that its history is about to disappear.

9 Introduction

Why, therefore, should anyone want to retell an old story? If no one has got the story right after such a long time, why should anyone want to do so now? Is this present study an exercise in perversity? Historians cannot help but know the outcome of the past events that they seek to illumine. But looking backward with the denouement already known, they must avoid reducing the past by oversimplifying it. Reductionism continually risks losing the variety of human personality and infinity of social fragmentation that characterize history's actors, who can look only into the future, with its uncertainties and challenges. As James Axtell has argued, if we are to recapture their lives as they lived them, we must place ourselves in their position; ignore the outcome; recreate their ambitions, their options, and their choices; and explore short- as well as long-term consequences.35 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster is, in the first instance, a narrative history. It draws on every available source to tell as accurately as possible the story of a French naval campaign during the War of the Austrian Succession. It is, in other words, an attempt to explain through careful reconstruction the events and circumstances of the expedition. Second, it is also an exercise in social history. It tries to employ some of the techniques of social scientists in order to reveal something of the lives of thousands of seamen and soldiers who lived and died during the campaign. And finally, it is a military and political history in the traditional sense, for it includes a discussion of strategy and politics in the context of colonial defence and continental ambition. Narrative history has too long been scorned as histoire evenementielle, wherein the particular words and idiosyncratic behaviour of persons are viewed as dross on the surface of the true metal of socioeconomic structures created by underlying historical forces, be they bio-demographic or those of historical materialism. The reappearance of historical narrative, however, has gained new respectability among some historians concerned that the "new" social history of the data banks has become impersonal while failing to achieve objectivity.36 Ideology and social theory have also proved as grossly distorting as romantic partisanship.37 Continuities appear to be at least as strong as discontinuities, and events no longer seem to be guided by social forces that have become ever more elusive and difficult to define. Locale, the particular, and the unforeseen increasingly demand their place in historical explanation. Narrative is more than a device to impose order on chaotic events. As Simon Schama observes, it also joins the personal and the public histories of the actors, while chaos

io Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

brings its own authenticity.38 Nevertheless, narrative history is more than a chronological, sequential ordering of events into a single coherent story that is mainly descriptive rather than analytical.39 The way a story is told profoundly affects its impact. Whether the story of failure is told in a romantic glow that makes it glorious, or in the passive voice, which renders it dismal, or obliquely, which may reduce it to the status of cheap farce, the story is still the thing. My first aim, then, has been to tell a story. Even so, the techniques of several social sciences have conferred benefits on historians that cannot be dispensed with. The rigorous methods of demographers call attention to the need for great care using sources but also to the possibilities of forming links between different ones. Geographers have sensitized historians to the spatial dimensions of history and the opportunities that can be derived from employing such hard sciences as climatology and meteorology. Although some social scientists have perhaps been too anxious to travel beyond the written record of the past, they often display great imagination in their creative use of lists of people and things. Cultural anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and bio-medical historians have been more willing than many historians to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to shed light on the lives of those whom Eric Wolf has called "the people without history."40 Two of the major strengths of the "new" social historians that I have sought to harness are evocative detail and quantitative precision. Earlier studies that dealt with the French naval expedition to Nova Scotia in 1746 both ignored the thousands of seamen and soldiers involved and gave many erroneous data concerning their numbers. History books are filled with oft-repeated errors, and I have expended a good deal of time and effort to ascertain the actual size of the expedition and the logistical and social dimensions of the campaign. I have done so in order to achieve another aim of this study, which is to describe the material, professional, and psychological lives and social relations of the thousands of men involved. This effort represents, in part, what my colleague, George Rawlyk, has called a growing reaction to an older historiography of Louisbourg that focused on the two sieges of the fortress. But I am not sure that I have succeeded in creating a "more accurate and sensitively-crafted historical record."411 insist that the personal circumstances and peculiarities of the actors remain more important than non-existent averages and means derived from compiling statistics, even after I have done that myself. But very little personal evidence was available, and though my ambition was to write about the human face of naval disaster, only the reader can say whether I have succeeded.42

ii Introduction If all that we wanted to know about the French naval expedition of 1746 is what happened, a narrative of events would be sufficient. But the events of the expedition, the circumstances surrounding it, and the context in which it occurred deserve closer scrutiny for several additional reasons. First, it represented the largest French expeditionary force dispatched overseas before the American War of Independence. Not even the defence of Canada a decade later inspired such a singular effort. Second, and more significant, closer examination of the events leading up to and during the expedition and of the behaviour of people who took part may provide a better understanding of the limits to power in Bourbon France, for this expedition failed to accomplish a single one of its military objectives. After examining the system of French naval power under stress, we may be able to discern its operations better than before. Naval history is essentially political and diplomatic history. In the words of Johannes Tramond, "La marine est La Politique," an aphorism quoted approvingly by Gerald S. Graham.43 Navies are creations of modern states. They are very costly to build and maintain. Although in their making they depend primarily on the action of government, they possess clear limitations as instruments of policy.44 How the French government viewed its navy during the 17403 and the degree to which the navy played a role in French foreign policy, war fighting, and domestic political conflict form the third theme of this work. In an earlier study, I argued that forces outside the department of marine basically dictated French naval policy, with little reference to the navy's potential to carry out its assigned task.45 If accepted, this interpretation explains why we must look well beyond the navy and its secretary of state and minister to find the origins of the d'Enville expedition. At the same time as we consider the story of the French expeditionary force, however, we ought to keep in mind two major developments in the writing of military history during the past quartercentury. The first is the growth of studies of warfare as an institution of European society that stress war's connection with and effect on technical, social, and economic change.46 They tend to reject earlier, strictly military history, which abstracted war from its environment in order to emphasize human will, strategy, arms, and tactics. The new trend insists on the constraints imposed on war by social, economic, and political developments.47 The second trend has been a return to use of the case study, but to study the conduct of war less for technique than to control or guard against the too-sweeping generalizations about war's relationship to society to which the first development naturally leads.48

12 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

The case study also lends itself to the methodological experiment in which I have engaged. It encourages evaluation of the aggregate picture of social groups recently constructed by social historians such as T.J.A. LeGoff, who have been working in French maritime history to great effect.49 It allows naval history to be integrated more fully into recent revisionist studies, and it permits introduction of methods of cultural anthropology and bio-medical history that require a certain specificity with respect to people and circumstances. Moreover, the method has been very effective in eighteenth-century colonial and naval history, and its use here follows an honourable tradition.50 The French naval expedition to Nova Scotia in 1746 represented a significant step in the evolution of nation-states toward asserting their power overseas. Its failure belies any view of the inevitability of victory arising from sea power. A careful reconstruction of the events of the expedition and the circumstances surrounding it reveals only uncertainty and confusion in the struggle between two navies. The d'Enville expedition was not destroyed by superior enemy forces - its ships never met the enemy in battle. Nature, in its climatic and pathogenic guises, destroyed the French expeditionary force. Nevertheless, questions of human weakness, personal ambition, and professional competence must be examined and the evidence weighed. Why this expedition, involving thousands of men and costing millions of livres, failed to accomplish a single military objective reveals much about the ambitions and frailty of men, the arbitrariness of success, and the limits of power in the eighteenth century. Dissecting the expedition's corpse to construct an anatomy of a disaster indicates that despite growing "sinews of power" in nation-states, forces remained over which men continued to exercise little or no control.51 In order to begin our examination, however, we must go back some 18 months before the day when La Renommee lurched into Port Louis bearing her evil tidings, back to the Anglo-American siege of Louisbourg then under way and about to be crowned by success. What follows is only part of the story, the part that I have been able to piece together. I have tried to avoid speculation and the temptation to link my narrative or bridge the empty spaces with discussions of what may have happened or what probably occurred, not because I reject such an approach, but because I believe that it ought to be left to the novelist. Where I have failed to observe the proprieties of objective scholarship in the absence of evidence, I crave the reader's understanding or indulgence. Although I have gone to considerable lengths

13 Introduction

to ascertain the facts of the d'Enville expedition and suppressed explanation and interpretation in order to stress incident and presentation, I presume to think that I have written history and not anecdote. Organizing and presenting the material in the way that I have reveal my ambition to offer meaning beyond analysis, but in the long run only the reader can decide whether I have succeeded. I hope that I have.

i Policy and Ambition: Background to a Naval Expedition Nothing would be more preposterous than to think that, just because some people wield power, they ... are unswayed by passions. In fact, they are no more rational than the rest of us.1

The capture of the port and fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island by a combined force of New Englanders and British navy warships late in June 1745, and the threat that this posed to the French position in Canada, were the immediate cause of the French naval expedition to Nova Scotia the following year.2 But news of Louisbourg's fall scarcely disturbed the euphoric haze through which French opinion viewed international relations during that summer. After four dismal campaigning seasons, courtiers at Versailles and citizens of Paris had been celebrating victories of French arms for nearly three months when news arrived that the colonial fortress had surrendered.3 Frenchmen paid little attention to colonial affairs at any time, and Maurice de Saxe's great victory over combined English, Hanoverian, Austrian, and Dutch forces at Fontenoy in May overshadowed what little interest remained.4 The subsequent four-month campaign resulted in several more successful sieges in the Austrian Netherlands and kept the clergy at Notre Dame busy preparing Te Deums all summer and on into the fall.5 Ministers and secretaries of state also puzzled over the significance of the successful landing in Scotland of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in August. Did it place a potentially powerful weapon against Great Britain in their hands? Or was the Young Pretender's act an acces defolie that was best ignored?6 As late summer wore into autumn, the victories of the Highland army at Prestonpans and Carlisle favoured the former view and increased pressure for a decision, while reduction of additional barrier fortresses continued to focus attention on the Low Countries. As

15 Policy and Ambition: Background

Louis xv's advisers pondered what action to take with respect to events in Scotland and the Low Countries, only the minister responsible for colonies and a few thoughtful subjects reflected on the seriousness for France of the loss of its largest fortress in North America.7 Louisbourg's capture by American colonists and the British navy immediately destroyed the French sedentary or dry cod fishery around Cape Breton Island, seriously threatened the still more valuable green fishery, and put an end to a growing entrepot trade involving New England merchants and French West Indian planters.8 But, it also invited an enemy attempt on Canada.9 Taken together, these consequences pointed to the rapid loss of France's North American possessions. Yet the obvious option - to mount an immediate expedition to recapture Louisbourg or to defend Canada - was effectively countered by prevailing opinion in France best captured in the comte d'Argenson's famous aphorism, "il faut conquerir 1'Amerique en Allemagne."10 This statement encapsulated traditional French statesmanship, and several months passed before a decision was taken to mount an expedition. The wider background of events and motives leading up to the combined military and naval expedition grew out of several diverse developments that we need to explore in order to appreciate the subsequent d'Enville catastrophe. The history of the French expeditionary force to Nova Scotia requires a political, military, and social context in which to be set. What follows is a brief thematic review of the collapse of French foreign policy during the preceding halfdecade, the confused war aims and military and naval weakness reflected in the continental campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession, and the growing political divisions in the court or Louis xv. We consider as well the role of family ambition in the social milieu of naval-policy formation and the place of Jean-Frederic Phelypeaux, comte de Maurepas, minister and secretary of state for the navy, in the politics of the day. Finally, I introduce the tragic figure of Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Frederic de Roye de La Rochefoucauld, due d'Enville, a victim of his family's ambition and his own incapacity. When we look at these factors together, in all their complexity, it becomes clear that in the autumn of 1745 France was beset by a confusing number of options and illusions. Moreover, the exceptionally fluid conditions created by recent military-political events might render a French naval riposte in North America unnecessary. The background to the naval expedition reveals much about the socialpolitical chaos of France during the 17405.

16 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

By 1745, French statesmanship was in disarray. Character and circumstance had so altered the royal council during the previous five years as virtually to extinguish its importance. Foreign policy and the institutions for its creation and execution had collapsed. Five years earlier there had been a French foreign policy, still in the capable hands of Andre-Hercule, Cardinal de Fleury. His aim was to preserve the peace of Europe, to strengthen the government's financial resources by means of frugal expenditure and tightened administration at home, and, through diplomacy and alliances, to establish France's independence as arbiter of peace abroad.11 Earlier formal alliances with Great Britain and the Netherlands had not been examples of eccentric and unnatural dynastic diplomacy. The post-1715 Anglo-French rapprochement had not sacrificed the national interests of either party to the other.12 As early as 1714, Louis xiv himself had understood France's need to alter the kingdom's traditional anti-Hapsburg foreign policy.13 Subsequent French foreign policy was predicated on a coincidence of French and British interests in the Spanish empire and the Mediterranean and a mutual interest in preventing restoration of Austro-Spanish hegemony on the continent. These goals appeared to have been achieved by 1731, and France and Britain resumed increasingly independent policies. In both kingdoms, groups fretted, welcoming every opportunity to increase misunderstanding.14 The War of the Polish Succession, 173335, revealed the growing strength of the anti-Hapsburg faction in the French court and, also, that French military strength was not as great as it seemed. But during the rest of the 17308, Cardinal de Fleury continued to focus France's commitment to preserve British neutrality, gain Lorraine, and increase its own diplomatic independence. By 1740, French foreign policy was widely acknowledged to have achieved near-miraculous success in isolating Britain from the continent, renewing French influence with Turkey, neutralizing the Hapsburgs, and exercising domination over most other European nations in between.15 In the words of Frederick n of Prussia, France had become the arbiter of Europe.16 Not so commonly acknowledged is that this success had been carefully constructed on recognition of France's internal difficulties, lack of military might, and need to pursue peace, especially in view of the weakness and unreliability of her allies, whose various interests often worked at cross-purposes. The death of the Holy Roman emperor, Charles vi, in October 1740, which overthrew the political balance of Europe, and Frederick n's attack on Silesia in December proved too much for Fleury. The war party at court clamoured to partake in the dismemberment of Hapsburg lands, and the direction

17 Policy and Ambition: Background

of foreign policy slipped from Fleury's hands into those of CharlesLouis Foucquet, comte de Belle-Isle.17 When Louis xv agreed in December 1741 to attack Austria, he made the greatest mistake of his reign. Kicking over the traces of his ageing mentor and listening to the war party at court, led by his mistress, Louise-Julie de Nesle, marquise de Mailly, allied to Belle-Isle, the king set France on a course that would not end for more than 20 years. At first, the new belligerence appeared to succeed. The war party, sustained by the court nobility, renewed its militant anti-Hapsburg stance, resumed the Bourbon alliance of France and Spain, and developed a Bavarian clientele. A Franco-Prussian alliance signed by BelleIsle in June 1741 confirmed the hawks' influence, and military intervention in Westphalia, Bavaria, and Bohemia reinforced it, as did the election of Charles-Albert of Bavaria as the Holy Roman emperor, Charles vn, in January 1742. But the resignation the following month of Britain's chief minister, Robert Walpole, Fleury's great collaborator, portended ill for France.18 Intense British diplomacy during 1742 was principally responsible for Frederick n's withdrawal from Austria at the end of the year. The French army departed Prague and began to withdraw westward up the Danube. Further anti-Bourbon diplomacy during the summer of 1743 left France increasingly isolated; its war-party leadership was discredited following French defeat in June at Dettingen, and policy lacked the intelligent direction of the cardinal, who had died in January.19 The subsequent renewal of the "Family Compact" in October only served to draw France further into Spanish machinations in Italy. By the end of the year, French armies launched against Austria two years earlier had been driven from Germany and deserted by an erstwhile ally, Prussia. France now faced attack from Austria, supported by British and Dutch troops, while soldiers of a British-supported Austro-Sardinian alliance were driving her Spanish ally from Italy. At the beginning of 1744, France had no chance to sue for peace and faced a growing coalition of increasingly belligerent allies. Cardinal de Fleury's death in January 1743 had ushered a new regime into government. Less than six months earlier, Fleury had sought to strengthen the royal council by arranging for the entry of Pierre Guerin, Cardinal de Tencin, and Pierre-Marc de Voyer, comte d'Argenson, as ministers of state, to check the ami-Austrian faction.20 The secretaries of state had remained united against the influence of Belle-Isle (marshal of France since February 1741) and, with the backing of the queen, succeeded in keeping him out of the council. But after Fleury's death, factional divisions appeared; for the next two years Louis xv acted as his own foreign minister and began to

i8 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

conduct his own secret foreign policy.21 The conciliar form of government declined rather rapidly. The king failed to assume his mentor's role of coordinating the work of members of the council. In March 1743, d'Argenson became secretary of state for war, and AdrienMaurice, marshal and due de Noailles, entered the council as minister of state. Noailles was the first duke to join in Louis xv's reign and the first new minister since Fleury's death.22 Finally, in November 1744, Rene-Louis de Voyer, marquis d'Argenson, older brother of the war minister, became secretary of state for foreign affairs. Historians have generally dismissed his grasp of foreign affairs, but he persuaded Louis xv to do away with the subcommittees of ministers, which had been in the habit of discussing the business of the council.23 By 1745, central coordination of the government's policies had ceased, and the court's role had been enhanced.24 Events during the previous three years, when French troops had served technically as Bavarian and Spanish auxiliaries, also revealed the fragility of France's apparent dominance position in Europe.25 Its army was undisciplined, and its martial quality had steadily declined since the beginning of the century.26 Of all the major armies in Europe, the French infantry was perhaps the worst, with ineffective musketry and no capacity to withstand a volley at less than 100 metres. Each regiment drilled its soldiers to its own standards, which contributed to disorder.27 The cavalry was characterized by poor mounts, antique equipment, and lach of discipline. In an effort to overcome the shocking revelations of these years in the field, the king and his new secretary of state for war implemented a set of broad reforms. During ten months following the battle of Dettingen, Louis xv issued at least 16 ordinances intended to reinforce military effectives and about 20 more concerning military engineers, uniforms, arms, discipline, logistics, and administration.28 But these had limited effect. Military weakness continued unchecked, characterized by indiscipline, incoherence, antique drill and tactics, and poor firepower and equipment. In this light and in view of the steady disappearance of conciliar government, the king's decision early in 1744 to enter the war formally against Great Britain and Austria by launching simultaneously four separate military campaigns against four different objectives arose from confusion, weakness, and necessity rather than from strategical insight and military strength. The first campaign was to support Spain's war in northern Italy; the second was to invade Britain in support of the dynastic claims of the House of Stuart to the British throne; the third was to invade the Austrian Netherlands; and the fourth was to engage the main Austrian armies in Alsace in

19 Policy and Ambition: Background

combination with a newly created Prussian-Bavarian alliance. No thought at all was given to French colonies in America. Cardinal de Fleury's successful redefinition of French power based on diplomacy, alliances, and reconciliation rather than military preponderance had become utterly lost from sight.29 All this boded ill for the French navy and the position of the comte de Maurepas at court. The war in 1744 went badly. Although the campaign in northern Italy went well at first, it only succeeded in further weakening the Bourbon family compact.30 The invasion of England ended miserably, even before the troops could be embarked.31 The military thrust against Charles, duke of Lorraine, in Alsace ended in fiasco when the king fell ill at Metz and the Austrians slipped eastward across the Rhine and swiftly knocked Prussia out of the war, once more leaving France isolated.32 Only in the Austrian Netherlands were French armies successful. And as each minister and secretary of state took to working individually with the king, the government largely lost any sense of direction; individuals and factions began to contend ever more prominently in order to pursue personal and group interests. Because the French navy was never responsible for the defence of the kingdom, it was never central to the government's concern or to its policies. Thus to make sense of naval matters, one must turn elsewhere than to domestic politics of the Bourbon monarchy, for the French navy never enjoyed any real political influence. It suffered from two very long-standing, fundamental weaknesses - lack of material and human resources and want of an effective strategy. The absence of the latter is not difficult to account for. The outbreak of maritime war in 1744 brought to an end an extraordinary period of growth in French maritime trade. A single figure illustrates the point. From 1716 to 1744 the value of goods exchanged between the West Indies and France had grown by at least four times, from less than 20 to nearly 80 million livres, representing 25 to 30 per cent of all French foreign trade.33 Of even greater significance, much of the colonial produce was re-exported, especially toward northern Europe, adding to the swelling revenues both of merchants and of the state.34 This unprecedented growth in maritime trade was accompanied by similar growth in the French merchant marine, where the number of ships in the fleet grew by three times between 1704 and 1743.35 But such expansion was not accompanied by concurrent increases in the navy, which evolved quite independently of any changes in maritime trade and shipping. The navy also suffered from financial malnutrition and, from 1741, a growing burden of unmanageable debt. The decision to constrain naval funds during the 17203 and 17303 was due to, first, necessary

2O Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

cost-cutting during the regency; second, to the desire to seek accommodation with the maritime powers and pursue an independent, continentalist foreign policy during the 17303; and then, to the growing reliance of the controller-general of finances on the India Company for protection of French maritime power overseas. All combined to restrict the proportion of ordinary funds available to fit out naval vessels for sea. The Anglo-French detente of the 17203 combined with financial constraints to undercut any rationale for building a large fleet and also affected decisions concerning the kinds of ships to be built. Although the regent had proposed a fleet including ten three-decker vessels, only one was built, and it never sailed.36 In the opinion of Admiral Rene Duguay-Trouin, sea battles had cost France far too much and had decided nothing. He favoured 74- and 8o-gun ships as being just as useful in war against the English, who gained enormously from provoking fleet actions with a numerically inferior navy. The naval minister agreed.37 When in 1725 the king established the size of the fleet at 54 ships of the line, funds were increased from eight to nine million livres but all new construction was suspended.38 The navy was to possess 40 to 50 twin-decked ships of from 50 to 74 guns, which, together with frigates, could be deployed in squadrons.39 Shipbuilding resumed only slowly, and the largest vessels built before 1740 mounted 74 guns. Indeed, the first of the modern 743, Le Terrible, was launched only in 1739-40 Maurepas had delayed ordering larger ships until the same year, and when war broke out five years later, Le Tonnant, So guns, launched in 1743, was the largest ship in the French fleet. The great first-rate, Le Royal Louis, 112 guns, had been laid down at Brest but was never completed. With the exception of Le Terrible and Le Tonnant, France possessed no warships capable of fighting the great triple-decked first- and second-rates that supported British battle fleets. More significant, on the outbreak of war the fleet had not achieved the authorized strength established nearly twenty years before.41 Indeed, six months after the Battle of Toulon, 22 February 1744, only 31 ships of the line, just one more than had been available 22 years earlier, remained in service. Finally, it needs to be repeated that the achievement of French independence in the conduct of foreign affairs owed little or nothing to the navy or its presence. This need not have been a serious matter, and, indeed, the government's adoption of a forward policy after 1739 provided a significant opportunity for the navy and its minister to demonstrate just how effectively maritime forces might project French power overseas and thereby contribute to foreign policy. But

21 Policy and Ambition: Background

no such development occurred. Instead, events conspired during the next half-decade to reveal the navy's long-standing weakness and remove it from any serious consideration during the war. The role of the naval minister in this development remains an open question. The comte de Maurepas's influence in government at any time is difficult to gauge, for it relied heavily on his family, his connections with the king and royal family, and his many non-naval charges and responsibilities. In addition to having charge of the navy, which included colonies, he was also secretary of state for the royal household. He had direction of the Academie royale des sciences and Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, as well as general authority over several provinces, including Paris and its police. He was, in effect, a quasi-minister of the interior, exercising supervisory and regulatory roles over what constituted court and public opinion. Not surprising, he was surrounded by hangers-on and enemies. But his influence in government decision-making during his first 15 years in office remains problematic. His contemporaries were divided over his character. To the dues de Saint Simon and de Luynes, he was a nimble and adroit politician, intelligent, a man of the world, yet of great ability in personal diplomacy, a statesman who realized the value of the light touch, a man of probity, energy, and devotion to work, the possessor of a charming manner and a ready wit.42 The marquis d'Argenson acknowledged his keen wit and uncanny memory but thought him utterly dispicable in his private life, shallow, lacking in foresight, and a bad administrator who was incapable of treating grave matters seriously; he never listened and always spoke before thinking.43 Most recognized Maurepas as intelligent and quick to grasp issues but were divided over whether his witty, casual manner revealed the extent of his personal qualities or hid a superior intelligence and much greater abilities.44 Unlike Maurepas's contemporaries, some historians today place far greater weight on who he was than on his personal character. In two outstanding essays on the Phelypeaux family, Charles Frostin shows it to have been tied to five critically important sectors of French political life - financial, ministerial, parliamentary, court, and military - whose extent and diversity of relations, already established at the beginning of Louis xiv's reign in 1643, explains not only the rise of Maurepas's grandfather and father, but also the solid reimplantation of the son in the court of Louis xv.45 Joined to Maurepas's wideranging responsiblities, including his supervision of maritime commerce and overseas consulates, which permitted him to intervene in

22 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

finances and foreign affairs, his direct contact with the king through the royal household, and his accountability for the general welfare of Paris, Maurepas's innumerable family connections and strong bonds with the queen, princesses, and courtiers allowed him to establish himself as leader of a great court party. He was, d'Argenson wrote, "the minister of the Court," which suggests something quite different from Marmontel's belittling appelation of the courtier minister.46 Although Cardinal de Fleury and Louis xv both found Maurepas amusing, and most likely quite manageable, they also appeared to see some substance beneath the surface. Maurepas's influence undoubtedly grew after January 1738, when he finally entered the royal council and thereby became a minister of state.47 Thereafter, his anti-British animus, with its concomitant pro-Spanish leanings, placed him at odds with the growing influence of the anti-Austrian war party. Although Fleury controlled him, in 1739 Maurepas obtained the first extraordinary fund for the navy since the War of the Polish Succession in order to fit out a squadron to reassert naval presence in the Baltic.48 The expedition represented a direct challenge to British seapower in northern Europe, and while French diplomats reported that the squadron's presence during the summer of 1739 impressed the Swedish and Danish governments, its behaviour, poor seamanship, and logistical difficulties ought to have given the minister pause for thought. Only a series of accidents saved France from entering the AngloSpanish war during the winter of 174O-41.49 Maurepas desired to use disputes over neutral rights in the Caribbean to bring on war with England, but as long as Fleury remained alive he failed to gain his way.50 Nevertheless, the cardinal feared British conquests in Spanish America and the threat to trade and responded sufficiently to British actions and Maurepas's urgings to approve dispatch of a major fleet to the West Indies in the summer of 174O.51 Britain's failure to capture any of its objectives - Cartagena, Santiago de Cuba, and Panama or to attack the Spanish squadron, together with the marquis d'Antin's failure to carry out his mission and the entirely coincidental death in October 1740 of the Holy Roman emperor, enabled France and Britain to remain at peace until 1744. The marquis d'Antin's failure certainly weakened Maurepas at court. The number of his enemies also increased owing to changing of the guard among the king's mistresses and the death of his influential mother-in-law.52 The failure of a naval squadron to coerce the Barbary states of Tunis and Morocco in 1742 further checked Maurepas's influence.53 These developments compounded and fuelled

23 Policy and Ambition: Background

discontents and resentments arising from military setbacks on the continent. Naval impotence overseas and the growing importance of Spanish aggression in Italy led Maurepas to curtail severely future naval activity in North America. Even after war was finally declared between France and England, his instructions to the governor and ordonnateur of Louisbourg urged them to rely on colonial privateers to protect the local fishery and commerce and contained no orders to attack British settlements in Nova Scotia.54 The attacks launched against Nova Scotia in 1744 were chiefly in response to the clamouring of local officers, who saw opportunities for plunder. They had little to do with imperial defence and a great deal to do with family enterprise.55 No special measures were taken for the defence of Canada, and although Maurepas advised the governor of Martinique to prepare for war he promised no aid after advising him to encourage attacks on enemy shipping.56 By that time, however, the navy had become an inconsequential instrument of French military might. In the spring, two of the four major military campaigns depending on the navy had failed, not because of defeat in battle but because of ineptitude and ignominy. The Battle of Toulon, which involved 15 ships of the line in company with 12 Spanish warships, was inconsequential. Moreover, the brunt of the fight had been borne by the Spanish, for the nine French warships in the van took no part in it.57 The chief result was to increase enmity between the two Bourbon courts. Shortly before, on 6 February, an even larger French fleet of 22 ships had departed from Brest with a mission to sail up the Channel to engage the enemy, collect a formidable expeditionary force at Dunkirk, and escort it to England. But within a fortnight of its departure a hurricane dispersed the warships. Later, violent gales struck the transports, sinking several with all hands, and the lost time enabled the enemy to assemble a large naval force, leading to abandonment of the invasion.58 After the fleet struggled back into Brest with its 78-year-old commander among the many dead, and 900 sick were landed ashore, few illusions about French seapower remained.59 The navy had failed in every important mission assigned to it during the previous five years. By the end of the summer, it was hard pressed to maintain a thin defensive screen off the west coast of France and unable to escort merchantmen to the Caribbean. The disposition of French naval units during the late summer of 1744 revealed an order of priorities at the naval ministry. Clearly the navy's major task was to protect and support Spanish, especially Franco-Spanish and Spanish-American, trade by maintaining the bulk of its forces off the ocean approaches to the Mediterranean.60

24 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

A second, related task was to inhibit British activity in the Mediterranean in support of the Austro-Sardinian alliance in general, and to respond to British efforts to assert a naval presence east of Malta in particular.61 Protection of the valuable Levant trade held a high priority for Maurepas, because it was vitally connected to France's relations with the Sublime Porte. Provision of a screen of warships between Cape Finisterre, Spain, and Brittany off the western approaches to France's Atlantic ports was a third priority, and sending direct aid to French colonies in America was the least important naval concern of all.62 The real defence of colonial trade took place off the western approaches to Europe. Not only had previous naval defeats, scarcity of resources, and growing debt all but excluded the navy from further strategic consideration during the war, but Maurepas had to acknowledge the navy's inability even to provide escorts for ships sailing to the West Indies in January 1745, when he invited merchants in the Atlantic ports to tax themselves in order to pay for the service during the coming year.63 Maurepas was also facing difficulty and opposition at court during this period. Rumours abounded that he was to be dismissed from office in the wake of the Metz affair, when the king's mistress, MarieAnne de Nesle, duchesse de Chateauroux, had her revenge on those who had forced her from the king's side during his illness. She succeeded in having Alexandre, due de La Rochefoucauld, grand master of the king's wardrobe and the due d'Enville's father-in-law, and many high officers of the royal household exiled, and she sought the same punishment for Maurepas, whom she accused of fomenting all the trouble at Metz.64 A few days after arranging for his public humiliation, however, she fell ill and died suddenly on 8 December 1744. Her great friend and ally, the due de Richelieu, first gentleman of the bed chamber, put it about that Maurepas had poisoned her, but the comte de Stainville (later due de Choiseul) vigorously denied the charge.65 Nevertheless, Maurepas had received a stern dressing down from Louis xv and orders to humble himself before the hated mistress. During the winter his influence and reputation reached their nadir. With little or no influence either on policy or at court, Maurepas turned his attention to the colonies, where his response to sudden exigencies casts him in a better light than do his previous failings as a planner and organizer. In October 1744, he had settled on dispatch of six warships to the Windward Islands under command of the marquis de Caylus, and the following January he considered supporting a French offensive in Nova Scotia. Caylus's squadron, the only independent French naval force to sail to the Caribbean during

25 Policy and Ambition: Background

the entire war, had a four-fold mission - to assure defence of the French Windward Islands, protect French trade, interrupt the enemy's commerce, and, if possible, attack enemy colonies.66 In a successful plan to throw off the enemy, the squadron was careened and replenished at Cadiz after leaving the Mediterranean, and it sailed directly to Martinique.67 Further concern with Spanish America arose in January, when Maurepas ordered the chevalier de Piosins to remain off the island of Terciera to await a Spanish treasure fleet expected the next month from the West Indies and to escort the ships to Cadiz.68 In February, he ordered four of the line and a frigate under the command of newly promoted chef d'escadre Desherbiers de 1'Etanduere to convoy merchantmen to St Domingue.69 But ships became much scarcer when he turned his attention to North America. Current debt reduced the navy to near-impotence in light of Controller-General Philibert Orry's grant of an extraordinary fund of only ten million livres for the coming year.70 With unpaid expenses and encumbrances amounting to nearly 14 million livres, and an estimated five million or so required to fit out 26 of the line in port, ten million left Maurepas with few alternatives.71 Ministry officials allotted 7.6 million livres to already-committed expenses coming due and nearly 2.4 million to fit out one squadron of six ships and a frigate at Brest and Toulon for six months.72 Not one sou could be spared for North American defence. Any further arrangements would rob Peter to pay Paul. Thus a proposal to arm the Brest squadron for eight months required the reduction of the Toulon force to two ships.73 Lack of funds reduced the navy to leasing its ships and frigates to private interests for privateering. In January 1745, Maurepas also sent a senior clerk from the colonial office, Jean La Porte de Lalanne, to negotiate with merchants in Nantes, La Rochelle, and Bordeaux in concert with local naval authorities regarding the best means to raise the funds to pay for convoy escorts to the West Indies later in the year.74 Thus was born the infamous special tax of eight per cent on the value of all goods entering France from the colonies.75 Shortly before, Maurepas had considered a plan sent by the acting governor and ordonnateur at Louisbourg for a military offensive against Nova Scotia.76 It had called for fitting out two ships of the line and two frigates with a landing force of 600 men and a naval transport to carry siege works. But meeting the estimated cost of nearly three-quarters of a million livres remained contingent on obtaining additional funds above the ten million already awarded for the coming year's operations.77 This was hardly likely in view of the controller-general's awarding of ten million after the ministry's original request of nineteen million.

26 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

Acknowledging the danger of leaving Louisbourg unprotected, Maurepas went ahead with an alternative plan. He ordered one ship and two frigates to be fitted out for fisheries protection and the defence of He Royale. On receipt of news that a mutiny had broken out among troops of the Louisbourg garrison, Maurepas immediately ordered La Renommee, a frigate of 30 guns, then fitting out for St Domingue, to Louisbourg via Cadiz. She departed on 6 February.78 The speed in executing the order was admirable, but bad weather frustrated the minister's intentions. Storms interrupted the ship's passage to Cadiz, and ice off Nova Scotia and New England privateers later prevented the ship from reaching Louisbourg.79 Finding a second frigate proved impossible. Maurepas's repeated requests to Controller-General Orry to have the India Company bear the cost of fitting one out proved fruitless.80 In March he ordered authorities at Quebec to rush completion of a frigate still on the stocks and fit her out for Louisbourg. There she would join a newly built third-rate being fitted out at Brest and expected to depart later the same month.82 Maurepas had his three ships, and with news that an English attack on Louisbourg was in the immediate offing he ordered a second third-rate to be readied.83 But Le Castor was not launched at Quebec until mid-May, and two weeks later Le Vigilant, which finally sailed from Brest on 26 April, was captured as she sailed into the Louisbourg approaches.84 The capture of Le Vigilant practically ensured the loss of the fortress and was one more piece of evidence of the navy's weakness. No major French naval operations were planned for 1745, but naval officials knew that they had to maintain the bulk of the fleet in port or in the roadsteads armed and ready to sail, "in order to occupy the English and force them to keep their greatest maritime forces together on their coasts and in the seas of Europe."85 French authorities realized that if ships were not fitted out the English would divide their forces in order to blockade the kingdom's ports, intercept commerce, and attempt various seaborne enterprises against France, and they would send the largest part of their naval strength to America to seize or destroy French colonies.86 But the French government refused to make the necessary funds available, and the bulk of the fleet remained in port. No better illustration of the navy's limited usefulness exists than Maurepas's response to the news, which reached France on 31 May, that Louisbourg was besieged.87 Rumours of a pending attack had been arriving at Versailles for some eight weeks, and in response to intelligence reports that ships were being readied in England, Maurepas had already revised his instructions to M. de Maisonfort,

27 Policy and Ambition: Background

commanding Le Vigilant, and ordered a second third-rate, Le Mars, to be fitted out.88 The timing of events was unfortunate. The marquis d'Argenson was preoccupied with peace feelers to Great Britain, and the king departed the court on 6 May to join the army in Flanders.89 Maurepas naturally followed, and it was from Tournai nearly a fortnight later that he sent the king's instructions to Antoine-Alexis Perier de Salvert.90 Le Mars was still fitting out at Brest when a schooner reached France from Louisbourg at the end of the month, and Le St. Michel (64 guns) was immediately added and new instructions were issued. Two old frigates, La Parfaite (46) and L'Argonaute (46), already chartered to private interests to carry provisions and munitions to the fortress, also joined the force.91 But aid was strictly limited. Maurepas sought to use ships returning from sea to avoid delays in manning and hoped that Le Mercure (66) might return to Brest in sufficient time. This did not occur, but La Renommee, which returned to Brest in June, immediately joined the squadron.92 Naval authorities assumed that Le Vigilant was at Louisbourg and remained ignorant of her loss. According to their information, three third-rates and three frigates ought to have been more than adequate to deal with the enemy, which was thought to have but two ships of the line. They could not know that by mid-June the original British squadron had grown from three ships to 12, including five of the line, with Le Vigilant herself being the largest.93 Maurepas's response had been as adequate as his limited resources allowed, and Louis xv acknowledged as much. He really cannot be faulted. Although it was assembled piecemeal, Perier de Salvert's squadron was the largest French naval force ever to sail to North America. But delays were inevitable under the prevailing conditions, and the squadron got away from Brest only on 16 July.94 De Salvert had been left free to decide whether to attempt an attack somewhere in Acadia if the fortress of Louisbourg could not be relieved, but he was advised to watch out for several returning East Indiamen and richly laden "register" ships from the South Seas that had earlier been instructed to call at Louisbourg.95 He made first for the Azores and the Grand Banks to take prizes and seek news of Louisbourg's fate. La Renommee sailed ahead to await the others on the Banks and captured the Prince of Orange and Lieutenant-Governor George Clark of New York, who informed the French of Louisbourg's fall and the loss of Le Vigilant. After meeting Perier de Salvert and taking cognizance of the superiority of British forces off Cape Breton Island, the ships cruised in search of the Indiamen. Almost continuous fog and gales set upon

28 Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

them, and finally, with the season late and the ships needing water and wood, the squadron sailed for northern Newfoundland.9^ As the two frigates had been privately fitted out and sailed only occasionally with the others, Perier de Salvert left their captains free to act on their own. Soon afterward, a violent storm dispersed the ships, dismasting Le St Michel and La Renommee. Later on they rejoined Le Mars, also much damaged, and the three vessels sailed for France, rendering mutual aid to one another. On 12 October they all staggered into Brest.97 Papers taken from the Prince of Orange yielded important news of a planned Anglo-American attack on Canada, but otherwise the voyage had been fruitless. The chief benefit was political, for its three-month duration had given Maurepas a reprieve while the court considered proposals to support Charles Edward Stuart's landing in Scotland and meditated on the effect of Louisbourg's surrender on France's position in America. If the French navy suffered from a politically isolated, bellicose minister, too few ships, inadequate funds, poorly supplied arsenals, and weak administration, it was also in the hands of a geriatric officer corps. The full extent of the problem posed by an over-aged officer corps too long passed by for promotion needs to be grasped in order to understand how the young, inexperienced due d'Enville came to be named at the end of 1745 to command the greatest French expeditionary force ever directed to North America up to that point. For while it has been argued that the navy was reduced to a near nullity by 1745, its condition allowed Maurepas to pursue his own agenda, which was linked to family ambition. Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Frederic de La Rochefoucauld de Roye, due d'Enville, only son of Louis, marquis de Roye de La Rochefoucauld, and Marthe Ducasse, was born 17 August ijo^.^8 La Rochefoucauld was one of the oldest and most illustrious noble families in France, but the Roye branch had been Protestant since the sixteenth century and recently broken up and impoverished. D'Enville was first known as the marquis de Roucy. His father had entered the navy in 1688 as a garde de la marine after abjuring his Protestant faith. In return for permission to leave France to join her husband in exile in England, his father's mother, the comtesse de Roye, had been forced to leave behind at least six of her nine children. Louis de Roye entered the College of Louis-Le-Grand, where he converted to Catholicism. Louis xiv took a special interest in the young "new" Catholics from such an old and respected family, and Roye's entry into the navy as a garde de la marine and rapid advancement - he became capitaine de vaisseau five years later - were not uncommon.99 His three sisters were

29 Policy and Ambition: Background

also enclosed in convents and were converted; one, Eleonore-Christine, known as Demoiselle de Chefboutonne (1681-1708), married Jerome Phelypeaux de Pontchartrain in 1697 and became the mother of the comte de Maurepas. The marquis de Roucy (d'Enville) was thus his first cousin. Roucy's mother (d. 1715) was the daughter of Jean-Baptiste Ducasse, chef d'escadre since 1701 and naval hero during the War of the Spanish Succession. On i January 1704, four months before his marriage to Marthe Ducasse, Louis de Roye purchased the venal office of lieutenant-general des galeres from bailli Jacques de Noailles, to whom he paid 180,000 livres. This office transformed him into de facto commander-in-chief of the galleys.100 The money had come from his future bride's dowry of 400,000 livres. Louis de Roye's purchase of high office, subsequent retirement from the sailing navy, and marriage to the wealthy daughter of a recently ennobled sailor represented significant alterations to the status of both families. Moreover, the paramount influence that attached to kinship and patronage under Louis xiv meant that to a surprising extent careers remained open to talent and wealth. Louis de Roye's marriage reflected his successful search for financial security and social reintegration into the court aristocracy. Although a Protestant refugee in England, Isabelle de DurfortDuras, comtesse de Roye, remained the sister of two marshals of France, de Lorges and de Duras. As their nephew, and incidentally also first cousin to the due de Saint-Simon's wife, Louis de Roye (as later was his son) was allied to the most important courtier-clan at court - the one centred on the king and Mme de Maintenon.101 In 1720, at the age of eleven, the young marquis de Roucy obtained the reversion (survivance) of his father's charge in the Galley Corps, and 12 years later, aged 23, he was created due d'Enville as a result of efforts by the last due de La Rochefoucauld in the senior line to regulate his succession. Two weeks later, on 28 February 1732, he married 17-year-old Marie-Louise-Nicole Elisabeth de la Rochefoucauld (1716-1797), the duke's eldest daughter and presumptive heir. These actions reveal the aristocracy's continual search for family stability and continuation, for d'Enville was designated to assume the senior dukedom on his father-in-law's death.102 During the early 17403, his wife bore him three children, two daughters and a son, the future due de La Rochefoucauld and La Roche-Guyon, who was murdered at Gisors in 1792. By the 17403, then, d'Enville's connections to several ducal families and to the extended Phelypeaux clan placed him among the very senior court nobility.103 D'Enville, however, was virtually without naval experience. A statement of services that accompanied his request for the Cross of

3O Anatomy of a Naval Disaster

St Louis in 1736 claimed that in addition to the exercise of his father's old charge, beginning two years earlier, he had been involved in several campaigns in the galleys under his father's orders or those of the bailli de L'Aubespin, under whom he served during the bombardment of Tripoli in 1728.16, 187, 188, 194, 197, 216, 217, 227; rumours, 149-50 expenses, 25, 42, 216 finances, naval, 41, 42, 223

Finisterre, Cape, 99, 101, 200; battle of, 222, 223-4 fitting out, 36-9, 43, 44, 49, 67-8, 71; troopships, 52; at Rochefort, 60-1, 62, 63, 65 flag of truce, 190, 191, 194, 195 Fleury, Andre-Hercule, cardinal de, 16, 17, 19; and Maurepas, 22 flour, 69-71, 112, 113, 181, 191, 202, 217; like quicklime, 117 fog, 119, 122, 124, 152, 195, 201-2 Fontainebleau, Treaty of, 34 Fontenay-le-Comte Infantry, 36, 76, 86, 87-8, 181, 204 Fontenoy, battle of, 14 Forbin, Claude de, 135 Formigas rocks, 111 Foster, Joseph, 122, 194, 195 Fourcroy, M. de, 44, 64 fowl, 103, 105, 113, 147, 154. See also hens France, army of, 18, 225; foreign policy, 16-20, 226; navy of, 1920, 22-6, 39-40, 65, 66 France, Guillaume, 95, 150, 209 Frederick n of Prussia, 16 Fregault, Guy, 8, 63, 136, 139 Frehel, Cape, 78, 79, 80 Frostin, Charles, 21 Fundy, Bay of, 194, 196, 219 Gardiner, Robert, 114 Gascony, Gulf of, 101. See also Biscay, Bay of Gaudion de Coudray, M., 215 Gaulette, Sieur, 54 Gaultier, dit Bellair, Joseph-Nicolas, 196 George n of Great Britain, 34 George Island, 104, 123, 134, 227. See also Ronde, He Germain, sj, Father Charles, 105, 106, 141

315 Index Gibraltar, 102, 111 Girard, Abbe Jacques, 111, 140 Givry, Francois de, 43 Grand Banks, 80, 91, 98, 103 Grand Pre, no Granville, 36, 42, 52, 78, 79, 204, 205 grape-shot, 72 Grasse, Francois-Joseph, chevalier (later comte) de, 107, 219-20 Graveau, Jean, 118 Green Bank, 80, 81, 103 grenadiers, 86, 156, 188 Groix, He de, 3, 83, 85-6, 169, 2012, 203, 209 Groust, Captain, 204 Guegot, Father Athanaze, 227 Guerin, surgeon, 139 Guillemin, Charles, 122 Guillot, Jean-Joseph, 42, 52, 78, 79, 80 Gulf of St Lawrence, 100, 101, 130 gunners, xxii, 37, 60, 61, 86, 135, 186, 212. See also bombardiers gunpowder, 47, 71, 78, 90

He Royale, 34, 48, 70, 91, 96, 115; defence of, 26. See also Cape Breton Island He St Jean (Prince Edward Island), 106, no, 190 lie St Pierre, 105 Indians, 46, 103, 104, 105, 107, 192, 220. See also Abenaki; Micmac infantry of the line, 180, 215. See also troupes de terre intelligence, British, 94, 98, 108, 129-30, 185-6, 208; Canadian, 108; French, 89, 91, 190, 199 invasion of England, proposed, 19, 23, 41-2; abandoned, 23; feared, 39; renewed, 33 Ireland, 39, 94 iris (Common Blue Flag), 173-4 Isle Beauchesne, Lieutenant de V, 212 Italy, 18, 23, 224, 226 Ivory, Captain d', 198, 200

Halifax, 7, 126, 226-7. See also Chibouctou Havre au Castor. See Castors, Baye des Hawke, Rear-Admiral Edward, 224 health, 96, 170, 184. See also diseases; sickness hens, 114, 121, 124. See also fowl Hocquart, Gilles, 46, 48, 64,106, 221 hospital ship, 51, 102, 113, 128, 172, 194-5, J-97/ 206-8; converted hospital ships, 186, 187-9. $ee also ships: Mercure hospitals, temporary, 92, 94, 216 How, Edward, 179 hygiene, shipboard, 68, 145, 175

Kannan, Henry, 178 Kersaint, Guy-Frangois Coetnempren de, 3-4, 102, 103, 178 Knowles, Charles, 89, 130, 190, 227

Jacobites, 33-4, 39, 40, 41, 42, 213 Jeddore, 130

La Boucherie Fromenteau, Captain de, 195, 197-200 La Clue, Captain, 204 La Colombiere, Ensign de, in, 196 La Have Bay, 104. See also La Heve La Heve (Lunenburg), 46, 47, 222 La Jonquiere, Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel, marquis de, 49, 56, 57, 90, 113, 117, 134, 136, 139, 141, 142, 143, 170; at Chibouctou, 172, 173, 174, 177, 184, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191; background, 135, 163-5;

316 Index battle of Cape Finisterre, 222-3; departure, 194, 196, 197; return to France, 202, 203, 208, 210, 214, 217 La Jonquiere le Cabanac, Clement de Taffanel, 165, 222 Lake, Thomas, 148, 158 La Luzerne, Francois de Briqueville, comte de, 32 Landerneau, 56, 204 landing force, 89, 135 Landre, Sieur, 54 Langrange (les mitrailles), 73 La Porte de Lalanne, Jean, 25 La Raquette, He a, 123, 130. See also Ronde, He La Rigaudiere, Ensign de, 185 La Rocheallart, Gaspard Gousse, comte de, 32 La Rochefoucauld, Alexandre, due de, 24, 29, 210, 214 La Rochefoucauld, Marie-LouiseNicole Elisabeth de, duchesse d'Enville, 29, 39, 130-1, 210 La Rochefoucauld de Roye, Frederic-Jerome, archbishop of Bourges, 149, 150, 210 La Rochefoucauld family, 28, 209. See also Roye de la Rochfoucauld family La Rochelle, 36, 65, 84, 94, 185, 217 Laufeldt, battle of, 225 Leblanc dit Le Maigre, Joseph, 192 Le Brun, Charles-Armand, 44, 59, 64, 83, 84, 86, 87, 215 Legardeur de Repentigny, Ensign Louis, no Legardeur de St Pierre, Jacques, 106 Le Godheu, M., 203 LeGoff, T.J.A., 12, 159 Le Havre, 36, 77, 78, 80, 217 Lelarge, Captain, 220, 274ni2i

Le Loutre, Abbe Jean-Louis, 104, 107, no, 129, 165, 222-3, 228-9 Le Palais (Belle Isle), 203 Lestock, Rear-Admiral Richard, 148, 190, 195, 208 Leszczynski, Stanislaw, 60 Levassor de Latouche, LouisCharles, 130, 132, 133 lice, 99 Lind, James, 171 Linois, Charles Durand de, 158 livre tournois, xvi Lodge, Sir Richard, 226 Lorient, 36, 37, 83, 148, 185, 201, 204, 205, 206, 214, 215, 216 losses, 160-1; estimated, 4, 178. See also mortality Louis xv, 17-18, 30, 32, 36, 76, 89, 214, 222, 225-6; and Maurepas, 22, 24; to d'Enville, 128 Louisbourg, 27, 33, 40, 47, 48, 89, 90, 91, 95,103, 105, 108, no, 128, 130, 150, 173, 190, 227; capture of, 14,15, 27; return of, 225-6 Louisiana, 89-90, 217 Low Countries, 14-15, 27, 33-4, 213, 224-6 Luynes, due de, 21 Maastricht, 225 McNabb Island, 123. See also Ronde, He Machault d'Arnouville, Jean-Baptiste, 40, 42 Madras, 129, 225-6 Maillard, Father Pierre, 228, 270^3 Mailly, Louise-Julie de Nesle, marquise de, 17 Maisonfort, M. de, 26 Maltois, Port, 220 manning, 36, 43, 60; at Brest, 74; at Chibouctou, 186; at Rochefort, 61, 63-4; of troopships, 52

317 Index Marin de La Malgue, Paul, 106 Mariniere, Ensign de, 223 maritime trade, 19; losses, 41 Marmontel, Jean-Francois, 22 Marqueissac, Captain, 146 Martin, Rear-Admiral, 108 Martinique, 23, 40, 101, 111, 146, 166, 197, 221 Marville, Claude-Henri Feydeau de, 150 Mascarene, Paul, 179, 220, 228 Massachusetts, 125, 129 Maulevrier-Langeron, comte de, 30 Maurepas, Jean-Frederic Phelypeaux, comte de, 6, 7, 15, 25, 27, 30, 32, 34, 36, 40, 44, 51, 52, 57, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65, 75, 77, 79, 80, 83, 84, 93, 94/ 139. H9-50, 151, 170,

l86,

2O9-1O, 211,

213,

2l6,

217, 218, 222, 223; character and influence, 21-3, 66; Louisbourg and Canada, 47, 48; opposition to, 24; papers, 8 medical services, 192 Meric, Brigadier Claude de, 86, 89, 91-2, 93, 187, 191-3, 214, 215, 222 Micmac, 104, 106, 107, 108, no, 126, 171,190, 191, 196; sickness, 229, 27on33 military stores, 43-4, 64, 76; to Canada, 47 Minas, 46, 103, 105, 108, no, in, 140, 165, 171, 194, 220 Mitchell, Cornelius, 166-7 Mondion, M., 64, 215 Montlouet, Remy-Claude, marquis de Bullion de, 134, 136, 139, 141, 142, 157, 214 Morlaix, 147 mortality, 4, 92, 116, 117, 152, 153, 154, 156, 158, 159-62, 174, 176, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209; at Chibouctou, 177-83

mortality rates, 146-7, 158-62, 17982; on board Le Mars, 158-9 munitioner-general. See purveyorgeneral Nau, Father Luc-Francois, 99 naval administration, 58-9, 66, 114, 145, 162; at Rochefort, 60, 64-5 naval battalion, 62, 86, 87, 156, 187. See also naval infantry; troupes de la marine naval constructors, 55, 58 naval infantry, 156. See also naval battalion naval officers, 28, 31, 77, 115-16, 128-9, M2' J43' 145/ ^5°' i63, 165, 215 navigation, 198, 199, 200, 201 Negro, Cape, 195 Netherlands, 225. See also Low Countries; United Provinces New England, 93 New England fishermen, 122, 126 Newfoundland, 28, 80, 90, 93, 103, 104, 105, 107 New France, no, 135. See also Canada Noailles, Adrien-Maurice, marshal and due de, 18, 33 Northeast Trade Winds, 96-8 Nouailles d'Ayme, Louis de, 151-2 Nova Scotia, 23, 24, 98, 101, 102, 111, 123, 124, 125, 126, 151, 155, 167, 217, 219, 221, 226; plan to attack, 25; weather off, 91 Oleron, He d', 94 olive oil, 113 Ollivier, Blaise, 54-6, 57, 58, 59 ordnance stores, 72. See also gunpowder; shot Orleans, chevalier d', 30

318 Index Orry, Philibert, 65; and naval debt, 25, 40; dismissal, 40, 42 Ortegal, Cape, 3, 98; battle of, 135, 222 Ostende, capture of, 33

Ponthieu Infantry, 36, 76, 84, 86, 878,102, ill, 120,128,135,147,181, 185,197,198,199, 200, 206, 208 Porpoise Bank, 104 port-captain, 54-5, 57

Port La Joye, no Page, M., 124 parasitic infestation, 143 Pares, Richard, 137 Paris brothers, 40 Parkman, Francis, 6, 8, 122, 136 peace negotiations, 149, 151, 224-6 peas and beans (dried), 113, 114 Pellerin, Joseph, pere, 60 Penmanec'h, 3, 203, 205 Penmarc'h, Pointe de, 82 Perier, the elder, Etienne, 56, 57, 122, 163, 165 Perier de Salvert, Antoine-Alexis, 27-8, 33, 40, 49, 69-70, 244ng6 Perrault, Etienne, 185 Perrot de Fercourt, chef d'escadre, 31 Peter, Jean-Pierre, 171-2 Petrimoulx, Michel, 47 Phelypeaux family, 21-2, 29 Philip v of Spain, 199 pilots, 119, 123; Acadian, 104, 105, 194; inexperienced, 146, 157; lack of, 115, 116, 167, 169 Piosins, chevalier de, 25, 61 Placentia, 48, 91, 149 plague, 119, 171 Plougastel, 81 Plymouth, 152, 158 Poissonier-Desperrieres, Antoine, 171- 174 Polish Succession, War of the, 16, 30 Pompadour, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise (later duchesse) de, 33, 40 Pontchartrain, Jerome Phelypeaux, comte de, 29

Port Louis, 4, 12, 43, 49, 59, 63, 64, 76, 77, 81, 92, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218; returning ships, 154, 201-2, 203, 204, 205; troop embarkation, 36, 83, 85-6, 88, 181 Port Mahon, 111 Porto Navalo, 206 Portuguese Trade Winds, 101 Pringle, Dr John, 174 prisoners of war, 94, 107, 110-11, 124, 136, 140, 152, 153, 178, 189, 190, 195, 196 prizes, 103, 104, 105, 107, 118, 124, 147, 151, 167, 188, 191, 198 provisioning, 36, 61, 62, 69-71, 79, 81, 114; at Aix Roads, 88-9 provisions, 36, in, 112, 117, 154, 162, 170, 181-2, 184, 191, 193, 210, 215, 217, 221; captured, 104, 105; for the sick, 69, 71, 112, 114, 200, 207-8 provisions ships. See storeships Prugne, Col. de, 87, 139, 141, 142, 204 purveyor-general, 36, 37, 40, 43, 53, 61, 69-71, 78, 83, 112, 114, 117, 154, 216 Puyzieulx, Louis-Philogene Brulart, marquis de, 213, 225 Quebec, 26, 44, 47, 49, 81, 100, 106, 108, no, in, 121, 129, 140, 165, 185,

221, 222

Quiberon Peninsula, 148 Ramezay, Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas Roch de, 106, 108, no, in, 125,

319 Index 140-1,190,191,193,195,196, 220, 221 rations, 37, 62, 69, 192. See also provisions rats, 153 Ravenel, Guillaume-Paul Bouchart de, 84, 203, 204, 205, 211 Raz, Pointe de, 82 Re, He de, 84, 212 reinforcements, 166-70 Renoul, Pierre, 118 Richelieu, due de, 24, 35, 40, 42 Ricouart, Louis-Balthasar, comte de Herouville, 60, 62, 63, 64-5 Rochambeau, Francois de, 32 Roch de Ramezay. See Ramezay Rochefort, 36, 47, 53, 77, 79, 84, 86, 90, 92, 117, 191, 198, 208, 211, 217; administration, 60, 62; disease, 172; fitting out, 44, 50, 62, 76, 85; provisions, 112; seamen, 75 Rocoux, battle of, 150, 199, 213 Rocquefeuil, comte de, 31 Ronde, He, 104, 106, 108 Rothelin, marquis de, 202, 204, 211, 216 Roucy, marquis de, 28, 29. See also Enville Roye, Isabelle de Durfort-Duras, comtesse de, 29 Roye, Louis de la Rochefoucauld, marquis de, 28, 150 Roye de la Rochefoucauld family, 28,29

Sable, Cape, 126, 197, 220 Sable Island, 3, 116, 119, 121-2, 123, 124, 130, 154, 155, 167, 169, 190, 195 Sable Island Banks, 104 sailors, xxii, 74-5, 82, 100; mortality, 147

St Domingue, 25, 101, 115, 150, 166, 167 St Francis, 106 St Lawrence River, no St Lunaire Bay, 29 St Malo, 36, 42, 52, 76, 77, 150, 217; delays at, 78, 79, 80, 81 St Mary's Bay, 46 Saint Sae'ns, Ensign de, 102 Saint Sernin, comte de, 148, 203 Saint Simon, due de, 21, 31 Ste Marguerite, Havre de, 124 Sainte Maure, comte de, 31 Salaberry de Benneville, Vincent d'Irumberry, 31, 32 Salies, chevalier de, 103, 105-8, 170, 219-21, 222-3 salt pork, 114 Sambro, Cape, 104, 107, no, in, 124, 190, 194 Santa Maria (Azores), 3, in, 112, 198, 199 Saumarez, Philip, 152 Saumur Infantry, 36, 76, 84, 87-8, 156, 181, 182, 197, 204 Saxe, Maurice, comte de, 14, 33, 150, 213, 225 Scotland, 14-15, 28, 33, 39, 89, 94 Scott, Hugh, 190 scurvy, 105, 112, 117, 133, 143, 146, 204, 206-8; search for remedy, 171-4 seasickness, 99-100 Serigny, Captain de, 211 sheep, 103, 105, 112, 113, 114, 121, 124, 153-4, 192 shipbuilding, 20, 60 ship repairs, 50, 68 ships: Aigle Volant, 180; Albany, 107; Alcide, xx, 49, 50, 62, 86, 117, 120, 121, 146, 151, 154, 156, 157, losses, 160; Alcyon, 166, 1678; Andromede, 185; Anna Sophia,

320 Index 76, 124, 154-6; Arc-en-del, 75, 76; Ardenf, 49, 50, 62, 71, 72-3, 99, 1OO, 1O1, 111, 117, 119, 121, 146, 147-9, 150, 152, 158, 211, 214,

loss of, 160, 186; Argonaute, xix, 27, 49, 50, 113, 121, 146, 147, 150, losses, 161, strengthened, 68; Aurore, 59, 68, 80, 98, 102, 130, 219, 224, at Chibouctou, 103-11; Bonaventure, 63, 180, 200; Boree, 4, 44, 61, 62, 75, 76, 86, 90, 114, 122, 123, 124, 163, 172, 184, 186, 197, 202, 203, 212, 218, loss of, 205, 210, 211; Boston Packet, 130; Brillant, 202; Bristol, 80, 208, 217; Canada, 50; Caribou, 49, 50, 59, 62, 81, 83, 86, 121,146, 147, 150, losses, 160; Castor, 26, 59, 80, 81, 98, 102, 116, 130, 219, 223, 224, at Chibouctou, 103-11; Chameau, 123; Charente, 62, 89; Chester, 220-1; Deesse, 221; Diamant, 62, 75, 76, 116, 117, 118, 124, 184, 186, 197, 204, 206, 209, 212, 215, 222-3, 282ni9; Diamond, 195; Elizabeth, 122; Emeraude, 222; Eveleigh, 118; Exeter, 148-9, 158; Fleury, xxiv, 84, 94, 195, 196, 209; Fly, 148; Fort Louis, 185; Fortune, 217, 218; Fougueux, 224; Francoise de Grace, 197; Galathee 51, 78, 164; Gironde, 47, 49, 61, 86, 119, 120, 122, 128, 129, 188, 194, 202, 203, 205, 206, 211, 212, 217; Gloire, 166, 167, 222-3; Grand Gideon, 197; Grand St Esprit, 227; Grande Amazone, 63, 99, 206-8, 215; Greyhound, xxiv, 197; Hampshire, 224; Henreuse Marie, 188; Heureux, 79, 204; Hinchinbroke, 130, 197; Jean Joseph, 202, 203; Jean Noel, 65; Judith, 130, 190; Kinsale, 130;

Legere, 121, 190; Leopard, 50, 61, 62, 64, 75, 86, 89, 116, 172, 184, 197, 202, 203, 204, 212, 217; Lion, 202, 203, 221; Lively (i), 84, 185, 186, 208; Lively (2), 118, 209 (see also Eveleigh); Lyon, 79; Marc Antoine, 117; Marguerite, 65, 100, 170, 180, 191; Marie, 47; Marie Marguerite, 78, 79, 80, 84; Mars, xvii, xxiii, 27, 28, 49, 62, 68, 69, 70, 71, 94, 113, 114-15, 116, 117, 118, 121, 146, 211, loSS Of, 151-2,

154,156, 157, 186, mortality, 158, 160; Megere, 51, 84, 118, 123, 135, 165, 182, 184, 186, 188, 190, 194, 197, 202, 203, 206, 211, 217; Mercure, xviii, 27, 50, 51, 68, 100, 113,117, 121, 123, 183, 209, 211; Mercure Anglois, 51, 100; Molly, 123; Mutine, 49, 81, 86, 90, 100, 101, 212, 218; Namur, 185; Neptune, 63, 166, 167, 197, 224; Northumberland, xvii, 49, 50, 76, 82, 86, 90, 94, 119, 120, 122, 125, 126, 130, 132, 134, 141, 157, 163, 174,182, 186, 190, 191, 195, 197, 2O2, 2O3, 2O5, 2O6, 21O, 211, 212,

215, 216, 217; Nottingham, xxiii, 151-2; Palme, 51, 84, 118, 121, 152-4, 202, losses, 111; Parfaite, 27, 49, 50, 113, 121, 137, 183, 184, 211, burnt, 191, 194, condemned, 170, strengthened, 68; Parham, 83, 205, 217; Penelope, 119, 209; Perle, 51, 78, 84, 100, 101; Petite Marguerite, 47, 49, 106; Poole, 148; Prince d'Orange, 50, 61, 86, 111, 120-1, 124, 146, 186, 194, 195, 197-200, 202, 205, 211, 212; Prince of Orange, 27, 28; Princessa, 158; Prosper, 65; Prosperous, 124; Prudent, 100, 117, 205; Raphael, 84, 151, 155, 156;

321 Index Renommee, xxi, 3-4, 12, 26, 27, 28, 49, 84, 101, 178, 197, 202, 205, 209, 211, 224, 2821124, in Nova Scotia, 103, 111, 119, 123, 140, 185, mortality and sickness, 102, 184, 186; Royal Louis, 20, 53; Rye, 130; St Charles, 65, 117, 118; St Dominique, 63, 198; Saint Esprit, 79, 197, 199, 201; St Jean Baptists, 197; St Michel, 27, 28; St Roch, 47; Ste Croix, 221; Severn, 167, 185; Shirley, 220; Sirenne, 65, 219-21, 222; Sultanne, 185; TaOT'sfodc, 148; Terrible, 20, 164, 166, 167, 224; Tzgre, 61, 62, 75, 116, 118, 123, 135, 172, 184, 197, 202, 204-5, 21I> 212; Tonnant, 20, 54, 59; Trident, 49, 50, 62, 69, 71, 87, 111,

Il6, 121,

122,

123,

124,

134,

l86,

l88,

204,

212,

215,

224;

139,141,151,155,163,170,184, 197,

Union, 63, 180; Viarme, 124; Vierge de Grace, 185; Vigilant, 26, 27 ships of the line, 20, 157 Shirley, William, 108, 129, 130, 190, 228-9 shot, 71-2 Shubenacadie, 129, 228-9 Sibon, Joseph, 54-6, 57, 58, 59, 82 sickness, 102,103,105,107,117, 119,121,146,151-2,156; at Aix Roads, 90-1, 92; at Chibouctou, !34/ !35' 136,165,170-1,173-6, 182-3,192; at Lorient, 205, 206; at Port Louis, 204-5, 2°6; at Rochefort, 172; at sea, 206, 207-8, 210 Spain, 17, 22, 23, 98, 154 Spry, Captain, 220 Stainville, Etienne-Francois, comte de, 24 Stan wood, William, 123-4 starvation, 153

storeships, 36, 62, 63, 65, 79, 80, 84, 86, 100, 116, 145, 154, 181 storms and gales, 23, 26, 152, 207; at Brest, 82; at Port Louis, 83, 202-3; at St Malo, 77, 78-80; at sea, 195, 197, 199, 207; off Nova Scotia, 117, 118-19, 120-3, X45/ 153, 156, 169 Stuart, Prince Charles Edward, 14, 28, 33, 34, 48, 199 sugar, 167, 200 Tencin, Pierre Guerin, Cardinal de, 17,40 Tenerife, island of, 90 tonneau de mer, xv-xvi Toulon, 25, 51, 54, 55, 58; battle of, 23, 30, 31 Townsend, Vice-Admiral Isaac, 93, 108, 130 Treoudal, Henri-Jean-Francpis Duplessis de, 152-4 Trepasses, baie des, 82 troopships, 36, 42-3, 52, 77, 87, 145, 189; mortality in, 181-2 troop transports, 53, 75, 76, 78, 80, 100. See also troopships troupes de la marine, xxii, 159, 211 troupes de terre, xxii, 36-7, 113, 120, 147; embarkation, 84, 85-6; mortality, 179-80 typhoid, 175-6, 178, 184, 206 typhus, 174-6, 206 United Provinces, 149 Ushant, 81, 208, 209 Vannes, 36, 43, 83, 84, 88, 206, 217 Vaudreuil, Pierre de Rigaud de, 89-90 Vialis, Michel de, 91 Vignau, Captain du, 80, 81, 10310, 224

322 Index Villars de la Brosse, Rene-Raquain, 37, 60, 63, 64, 212 vitamin deficiency, 143. See also scurvy Voisin, Captain, 113 Voutron, Lieutenant de, 186, 214 Wailsh, Antoine, 34, 41 Walpole, Robert, 17 Warren, Rear-Admiral Peter, 108, 126, 130, 163, 167, 179, 190,196 warships, 37, 39, 44, 49-51, 96, 100, 116, 182, 184; British, 157;

French, 158; and landing force, 87, 145; at Rochefort, 60. See also ships of the line water, 116, 121, 146, 147, 156, 162, 176; ration reduced, 117, 202; casks, 49, 61-2, 76 Wentworth, Benning, 179 westerlies, 98, 111 Western Bank, 124 West Indies, 24-5, 36,41,111,151-2, 154,162,164,166-7, *97' 223' 224

Yeu, He d', 84, 203, 206, 208