Jacques Bonnevie (c1660-c1733) Speaks from Beyond the Grave about Port Royal and Fort Louisbourg – 52 Ancestors #431

Ahh, my daughter – you’re here! In Louisbourg. I’m overjoyed, and my heart sings!

I thought no one would ever come. That no one would ever find me. But alas, you have!

It’s been almost 290 years since I, Jacques Bonnevie, passed from my mortal body on Île-Royale at Fort Louisbourg, the place you call Cape Breton Island, right across the bay from where you’re sitting right now.

Look up, you can see the fort in the distance out your window. Gaze across the bay. I’m buried on the spit of land right there, to the left of the fort, across the water with the sun glinting and sparking.

That’s the sprite of my spirit, dancing on the waves, so joyful that you are here.

Yes, my girl, I can see you. And your mother too, who accompanies you in spirit – and her ring that you wear. She’s standing right by your side and walks with you. Did you know that?

I’ve been waiting for oh so very long. Our hearts are bound together, forever.

No one else has come in all these years – more than 105,000 turnings of the pages, or days of our lives, have passed.

But now, here you are, and I have so much to share with you!

I lived to be an old man. Very old and very poor, but I was also very proud and determined.

I can’t believe you found me here, at Louisbourg, at the end of the earth, but you did. Louisbourg is just one of the chapters of my life. But let’s start here, because you’re here with me now.

I’ll show you where I lived and what my life was like in the 1720s and 1730s. Come along and take my hand. I don’t want you getting lost again. No, wait, maybe it was me that was lost.

Let me try to paint a picture for you. Maybe a drawing will work to begin.

The son of our chief military engineer drew this picture of Louisbourg in 1731.

It was the next year, just before Christmas in 1732, in the cold and snow, that I finally had to give up and ask for half-rations. I may have been an old, injured soldier, but I was a very proud old soldier. Winter in the North Atlantic is a depressing affair that lasts from October through May. We often don’t see the sun for a month at a time and try our best not to emerge from the homes or barracks that shelter us. The wind, those North Atlantic gales, freezes your flesh down to your very bones. The only thing that brings relief is the combination of a cozy fire in a fireplace, and food. Without both, one would die, so I petitioned the king’s favor on this ancient soldier who served him faithfully for so long, hoping to sustain myself and fend off death for at least another winter or two.

You and your “amie”, Justine, found that old paper, buried deeply in the those buildings stuffed full of old papers and parchments that you two are so fond of.

There, right at the bottom – why – that’s my name, Jacques Bonnevie, and also my dit name, Beaumont. That nickname means beautiful hill or mountain, just in case you didn’t know. I’ll leave it to your imagination how I came to have that nickname when I was a young soldier.

Jacques Bonnie dit Beaumont âgé

De 72 ans natif de Paris ancien caporal

Des troupes de l’Acadie où il a servi pendant

17 ans, il se trouve hors d’état de servir, et de

Gagner sa vie par une blesseures qu’il a reçeu

Dans la cuisse au service du roy demande à être

Payé de sa demie-solde à liste royalle

Fait à Louisbourg ce 20e décembre 1732

Of course, it’s written in old French, a language you only have a passing knowledge of today, so I suppose you’ll have to read it in English.

Jacques Bonnie dit Beaumont aged 72 years old, native of Paris, former corporal of the Acadian troops where he served for 17 years, he finds himself unable to serve, and to earn his living by an injury he received in the thigh in the service of the King, asks to be paid his half-salary to the royal list.

Done at Louisbourg this 20th December 1732

I was lucky, or perhaps it was through the Grace of God that I survived. Louisbourg was ravaged by smallpox in 1731 and 1732.

I died April 23rd of 1733, and my name was listed in the records of deaths of soldiers, sailors and other poor people that occurred at the hospital.

Ayyy, tiny pieces of my life still live on maps, on tiny slips of paper, in the soil, and of course, in my descendants. Pieces of you are there, too, with me.

Let me show you where I lived – the Louisbourg I knew. I want to introduce you, so let’s take a walk!

The flora and fauna near the fort looks much the same today as it did then. Our Mi’kmaq friends and brethren lived nearby, and we often hunted and fished together.

Years after I died, the fort was taken by the English and eventually left to deteriorate. Today, some of the fort has been excavated, preserved, and rebuilt.

It’s a long walk to the fort, but it was meant to be. After all, we needed to see who was approaching, just in case we needed to defend ourselves.

As you got closer, you could see the Bastion in the distance.

What a beautiful horizon. It’s hard to believe this isn’t France.

Your Mom is just as excited as you are to join me at Fort Louisbourg.

The fleur-de-lis, France’s symbol of a lily, topped all of the spires in the fort.

Soldiers guarded the gates at all times, day and night, no matter the weather.

The fort was protected by drawbridges at each gate, of course.

Plus a moat. One can never be too careful. We knew it was just a matter of time until the English would attack.

Notice the loophole slots in the wall. I’ll show you those from the other side in a minute.

In addition to the soldiers at the gates, the walls had several guard towers so we could see distantly out to sea.

The doors were massive and quite heavily reinforced with hand-forged iron spikes. I’m quite proud of those. Did you know that I was a blacksmith, too, in addition to being a soldier?

Notice the smaller door in the large door so that we didn’t have to expose the entire area just to let one individual inside. Not to mention, it took several men to open those heavy, massive doors.

Just inside the gate, looking back, you can see the roof over the entrance to the soldiers’ barracks, at left, beside the door, and the officer’s quarters at right.

Isn’t this iron door latch and lock just lovely!

And the handle is beautiful too.

Look at this latch cover, necessary in cold climates so the snow doesn’t freeze inside the lock hole.

This door led inside the soldiers’ quarters.

Look, here’s an ancient hook, forged right here in the town.

The soldiers slept in communal beds in the barracks.

This sleeping area shows spaces between mattresses, but when I was a soldier, there were no spaces, and we slept two to a mattress.

I can see by the look on your face because this is foreign to how you think today, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.

You see, it was extremely cold. There was one fireplace, and it didn’t even begin to take the chill off.

Body warmth was often a soldier’s salvation.

Plus, given the close quarters, it was much easier to make your bedmate stop snoring.

We had one wool blanket and slept in our clothes. We might need to be awake and ready at any moment. No time to dress.

Remember those slots in the wall above the moat? These shutters covered those slots on the inside but were easily and quickly unfastened if we needed to fire through those arrowslits, keyholes, or loopholes.

When it was hot, the same openings provided a breath of fresh air.

Here’s what I saw through the hole, which was just large enough for the muzzle of a gun. The moat, the other side of the moat, and more distantly, the harbour.

You and your Mom are looking through my eyes now.

The officer’s quarters had a single bed, privacy, and better furnishings.

While the soldier’s slits faced the other side of the moat, the officer faced the harbour directly and was more exposed. He might have been using a spyglass through the slits to watch the harbour.

Just beyond the barracks, and attached to them, was the fort wall.

Cannons were mounted in each space on the rampart.

We could fire volleys into enemy ships. We practiced often. Just having this ability served as a deterrent.

Hoisting those cannons up that ramp took lots of brute strength from many men.

From this perspective, inside the fort, you can see the cannons on both sides, some on top of the barracks and the top of the gate to the right.

Some locations sported lookouts instead of cannons, but of course cannon positions could be used for both.

Let’s climb down from the ramparts and take a walk inside the fort, near the fortifications.

The ramparts and moat are at right, with the Bastion coming into view.

The village is to our left.

A panoramic view.

Louisbourg may be isolated on a peninsula on the eastern tip of Cape Breton Island, but it stands in silent beauty.

While Louisbourg is peaceful, and sometimes nearly deserted today, it certainly wasn’t when I lived here.

This community was alive and always busy.

Fall is beginning to descend on the village, which meant we were hustling and bustling to harvest vegetables, dry fish and meat, put up rations, and prepare for the long winter months.

Two stone buildings stood just inside the walls, between the walls and the village. Another barracks, at left, for men not actively on guard, and our powder magazine, at right.

Both the soldiers and the powder stores had to be located close to the cannon ramparts so the cannons could be reloaded quickly.

When we fired all of these cannons, the entire earth shook and shuddered, reminding everyone of Hell’s fury – much to the satisfaction of our priests.

Often the soldiers in these barracks were awaiting transport back to France, but nonetheless, they were still soldiers and stepped up when needed. Unlike me, most soldiers didn’t stay in New France and could hardly wait to return home to the mother country.

The floors were uneven stone and dirt, often mud.

These barracks housed about 40 men at a time.

Soldiers here were often cold, damp and uncomfortable. When the barracks wasn’t being used for soldiers, we kept supplies, including lumber, here for building houses.

Next door to the barracks was the powder magazine.

This power magazine held 500 barrels of gunpowder. Now, I suppose I don’t need to explain why the barracks and magazine were not located inside the town, aside from proximity to the cannons.

We practiced often in this parade ground.

Beneath the wall was a secret passage. Ok, maybe not so secret.

This postern tunnel gave troops manning the outer defenses, maybe one-third of the garrison, swift access to the town without exposing themselves or their position to the enemy.

Water and dampness were our scourge at Louisbourg. Between rain, snow, freezing, and thawing, we couldn’t get the mortar to set here. In fact, there’s still water.

The view from inside the tunnel, looking at the beautiful town gate.

Might I draw your attention to this lovely door with its forged nails and iron hinges! One talented blacksmith living in Louisbourg made those. We often had to make replacements,or repair iron fittings because water is not friendly towards iron either, and rust impairs opening.

It would have been awful to be defeated by rust as the English were attacking.

Let’s walk into the main part of Louisbourg.

Fences weren’t for privacy, but to keep one’s livestock corralled.

Our buildings were mostly stone because wood rotted quickly and didn’t last long in this environment.

There were four city gates. You entered through the Dauphin Gate.

The Frederic Gate was the waterfront commercial entrance into the city, where supplies arrived. The stocks are located just inside.

Punishment in the stocks was meted out as needed, and everyone watched.

Merchants lined the street inside the gate, past the stocks, which served as a constant reminder to behave. The community well was located here, too.

Each home had an adjacent yard.

The yard wasn’t for children playing but was meant for growing food crops like vegetables and herbs, grazing a cow, and perhaps fattening up a few pigs.

Sometimes, we met outside, visited, and shared meals, especially with our Mi’kmaq brethren who lived nearby and visited often.

Most of our cooking was done in pots, over a fire, or in a hearth.

It was just a short walk up the street to the King’s Storehouse, known as the Magazin General. You could tell it belonged to the King because of the crown above the archway.

This warehouse held supplies needed to provide for the 700 soldiers quartered in Louisbourg, including clothes, supplies, shot, powder, and anything else needed to keep the town itself in order.

Water was a challenge here too.

While the food warehoused here was supposed to be for the soldiers, in hard times, it was shared with the residents.

You, daughter, will be pleased to know that, like you, we had cats, too. Our cats were working cats, though, and their job was to protect our food stores by doing away with the vermin.

Usually, multiple families occupied the same house, so as much as possible was done outside. This might mean cooking, laundry or any other activity that could be accomplished outdoors, especially in nice weather.

Walking up the street further and turning to the right takes us to the King’s Bastion, sitting atop the highest hill.

Access to the bastion is limited to one simple, well-guarded passage.

Soldiers guarded the one bridge that led to the governor’s quarters, citadel, and hundreds of military troops who served as both protection and labor for Louisbourg.

I walked with you across the bridge, here, with an all-encompassing view of the harbour and defenses.

Inside, soldiers guarded, paraded, and had daily military drills.

I so proudly wore this uniform!

Our French soldiers were the best of the best.

Given the presence of hundreds of soldiers, the King’s jail, a place that, trust me, you never wanted to be, was housed in the entranceway between the bridge and the Citadel yard.

The jail was on the right, and the chapel was on the left.

This jail still makes my skin crawl.

Iron ankle restraints held men on hard boards flat on their backs or face-down for untold lengths of time.

Not only was there no escaping, they couldn’t even move.

The hole. An even more inhumane form of punishment.

The jail door, with its latch and heavy bolt on the outside of course, and the barred window.

The window of longing.

The jail window was also barred on the outside.

The door leading out. Many men saw the inside of this door, but not all of them passed through it again, at least not alive.

It’s somehow ironic that the opposite door is to the one and only church in Louisbourg, in this case, the King’s Military Chapel.

God Bless and rest the souls of the men confined here, as they probably needed it more than most.

I worshipped here in this military chapel in the Bastion and my funeral was held here too.

The entire community worshipped here, beneath this cross, as there was never a parish church, much to the chagrin of the priests.

I had no family in Louisbourg, so my funeral was short and lonely. Seldom did anyone attend funerals if there was no family other than the priest and a few sisters. As a port and trading city, it wasn’t unusual for people to have no nearby relatives.

I was free, though, so I really didn’t care as I was off to join my beloved family members on the other side – where I am now watching over you.

Soldiers, especially poor disabled ones were simply given last rites, then wrapped in a shroud and taken to the church for funeral mass before being buried, sometimes communally. There were no caskets. Caskets were reserved for wealthy merchants and the upper class. Needless to say, I had no tombstone either. If I had had a tombstone, the date or at least the year that I passed into eternity would have been carved in stone, but alas, I had a humble wooden cross until the elements returned that to the earth, too.

If you were very important, you might be buried under the altar. I’ve only seen one person buried there, and then just his head. What a story that was!

Well, actually, that took place in 1745 or 46, a dozen years after I was already dead and buried, but I was watching just the same.

Jean-Baptiste Louis Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld de Roye, duc d’Anville was blown off course in a crippling hurricane after piloting a French ship filled with gold for soldiers’ pay. He wound up on an island in the bay, buried the gold and treasure to protect it from the British, then died there a couple weeks later. When his death was discovered, men from this fort sailed right over there, tout-de-suite, and dug him up.

They found his body but could not find his treasure. At least that’s the story here at the fort. I’ve always found it odd since his men that buried that treasure with him were also among those trying to locate it later. Suspicious, me thinks!

The military detail brought his remains back and buried his head right under the alter where you were standing. I hope you crossed yourself!

In the early years, when there was space, your grave was in the community cemetery, as there was no parish church.

However, Louisburg was a thriving town, one of the largest in North America, with more than 1500 people, so the cemetery filled up quickly.

After that cemetery was full, the corpse was loaded onto a cart, which was pulled by oxen to the cemetery outside another gate of the fort to the end of the point of land.

This cart would probably only have been used if the deceased was being buried in a casket.

On days when there was more than one burial, everyone was loaded into a larger cart for their final journey. That’s what happened when we had plagues and pestilence, such as smallpox.

Of course, all of those graves and most others had simple wooden crosses, if they were marked at all.

Some say I died in April, which meant that I might have been be buried right away, if the ground was thawed. Some years, the ice remained from harvest through May. Those who died during the winter were stacked like so much cordwood by the gate, wrapped in their shrouds or maybe just enough to keep them decent so we wouldn’t have to view their faces in death every day, wondering who would be next.

The bell tolled over Louisbourg every time someone died, which was at least once a day and more when the pox was among us.

As soon as the ground thawed enough to bury them, we did, and sometimes not very neatly. That was the job of soldiers. Just dig the graves and get everyone buried before…well…you know.

I hope you’ll forgive me, daughter, but I had to interfere a bit. We’re not supposed to do that, you know, from this side, but I really had no choice.

You see, you almost didn’t find me.

I heard you asking and asking in the Bastion. “Where is the cemetery?” Everyone was telling you it was gone, it never existed, or it was no longer there.

I knew better.

In the Citadel, you asked that soldier that looked so much like me, but he gave you incorrect information. Then you asked the person who worked for the Parks Service, and they told you wrongly, too.

I could tell that you somehow knew differently but were doubting your inner knowing, not to mention you had no idea where to go to find me.

So, well, I sent an emissary.

Remember the man who walked up to you on the bridge? When you were discouraged because you were told repeatedly that the cemetery and hospital were now gone. You had turned around and were getting ready to leave the Bastion.

Once you crossed that bridge, you could no longer see me – or where my remains lay today. You would no longer be able to find the hospital, or so many other important pages of my life.

I couldn’t let that happen, my lovely daughter.

I couldn’t let you leave.

You had come so far to find me.

Remember the man, alone, who approached you and said that he knew where the cemetery was?

Remember the man who said to you, “Step right here – look over there.” He pointed. “Walk to the building with the coppery roof. Yes, that one there, then keep on walking. It’s there. You’ll find it there.”

You squinted into the distance, unsure of what you were seeing.

You turned around to ask the man if you should be walking to the hill in the distance, or where, exactly – but he was gone. He hadn’t passed you to cross the bridge, and he was not inside the jail, chapel, nor Citadel.

Where did he go?

I know you were already hot, and tired, and had been sick. I saw the look in your eyes when you realized how distant that horizon.

Maybe if you could just walk to that part of town – that would be close enough.

But I should have known you better – much better.

After all, you’re Acadian – and you descend from me.

So, you began to walk.

You walked through the upper town.

Then you walked through the unexcavated part of Louisbourg.

You found the visitor center and noticed a golf cart and a sign for guided tours.

I heard you exclaim, speaking to no one, “Glory be,” and went inside, but I was secretly cringing. I knew that the golf carts didn’t go beyond the visitor center, and they didn’t even know about where you needed to travel.

You came outside, sweating, with fresh water and renewed determination.

You were going, come Hell or High Water.

You walked past all semblance of civilization, and kept walking, until you saw the sign.

The Ruins Walk?

Yes, yes, that’s exactly what you needed to find.

The walk is not easy. It’s solitary.

There’s no help.

You were not to be dissuaded, and set out with a spring in your step.

I could tell you were relishing this new adventure, but I was becoming increasingly concerned.

You first found the convent of the Sisters. They arrived about 1727 to educate the young people and teach the Catholic faith. They were non-cloistered, meaning they could move about the community, and they did, bringing comfort to many.

The convent was small and, of course, all that is left are a few foundation stones today.

Looking across what’s left of the convent walls, you can see the Bastion in the distance. The Sisters walked there daily to pray in the chapel.

A little further down the trail, and on the other side, are the ruins of the Brothers who ran the hospital.

We were very fortunate in Louisbourg because we had a hospital. Of course, nothing like your big hospitals today with their candles in the ceiling. Our hospital was two stories and had 100 beds and a lot of sick men, mostly soldiers. We gathered around stoves to try and warm ourselves in the winter – at least, those who could did. Still, it was the largest hospital in New France, the second largest building in town, and had its own spire, a source of pride.

From the harbour, you can see the hospital with its spire and the graveyard out on the point. We were so proud of this map, drawn in 1731, showing our busy harbour and beautiful fort.

The six Brothers of Saint-Jean-de Dieu ran the hospital, providing 40 different kinds of medicine and surgery, such as it was – without anesthetic. Daughter, you are so fortunate today.

Other hospital buildings included a bakery, kitchen, laundry, its own well, stables, and housing for the unfortunate black enslaved people.

The foundation of the hospital lies adjacent to the Brother’s home.

Looking across the ruins, you can see the harbor on the other side.

Looking from the hospital, back towards the Bastion. The Sister’s convent was on the other side of the road, towards town.

The footprint of the ruins isn’t terribly large, although it includes the weeds behind the mowed area. It took up an entire city block at the time.

I was a patient there in my final sickness. We lit candles by the bedsides, and the sisters prayed the rosary for us. Sometimes, there was bloodletting, and salves and poultices were applied. Often, the hospital was just the next step – the last step – before we met our maker.

Of course, no one wanted to go to the hospital for that very reason, so, often, it was too late.

Many died in the night. Morning light was met with trepidation. One would open one eye, then the next. Yes, I’m still alive.

Then, slowly glance to the left, then the right. Was the bed that had been full when you went to sleep now empty? Were the blankets still covering someone who wasn’t moving? Had the Grim Reaper visited? Was their soul departing?

I saw you standing here, where my bed once stood.

I saw you pray for me.

I felt you reach for me.

Your heart ached for me.

I know you felt my presence.

Oh, my child, I’m so very grateful that you came to visit me.

You stayed here with me for a very long time.

You could have stopped at the hospital, but you weren’t done.

You began walking away from Louisbourg once again.

I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea.

You passed where we built the lighthouse, beginning in 1731.

Now, only marshes, birds and bees mark the landscape which was once a thriving port, town, Admiralty Court, and fishing village.

What was once buzzing with the sounds of a busy town is now devoid of human noise, silent, except for the wind and sounds of the sea.

The view of the harbour on the other side was beautiful.

You walked on.

Piles of dirt covered by marsh weeds and a bump in the road. I knew what it was, my child, but you didn’t.

You said it felt like a gate, a dividing line, a transition. Were you talking to yourself or me? Or maybe your mother?

Ah, yes, now you know it was Maurepas, the grandest of the gates to Louisbourg – ironically pillaged and now nonexistent.

I passed through this gate many times, and now, so have you.

Each step takes you further from the town.

You turned around to see what Louisbourg looked like from this gate.

You wondered out loud where I had lived. I tried, but could not answer you.

Outside the ruined gate, the moat still stands guard.

The moat on the other side of the road, which is quickly becoming just a path.

The moats were well-made by soldiers and are still deep

Crosses and memorials have been erected in the distant meadow to honor the memories of those who both lived and died here.

I was here, as was everyone who lived in Louisbourg, but this is not where I rest.

At least one mass burial is found here, but I am not there either.

“In loving memory of the Hospitaller Brothers of St Jean de Dieu dispersed or killed during the siege of Louisbourg in 1759.”

Rochefort Point is where several fishermen lived.

Unfortunately, in 1744 or 1745, the fisherman’s cottage had to be burned so that we could effectively protect the coastline from an English naval attack.

The roof was probably thatch and sod, with the inside being sparsely furnished.

Today, a reconstructed cottage stands outside the fort.

Overlooking Rochefort Point, where the fisherman’s cottage was.

That’s not all that was found there, though.

A mass grave was found on top of the burned cottage.

The burials were probably English from the brutal winter of 1745-1746.

At first, my daughter, when you saw that there was a mass grave, you thought it might have been me because I was poor.

Alas, at least this mass grave was not mine.

Another view of the cross behind the mass burial.

Turn around daughter, there’s more.

The end of Rochefort Point is, thankfully, kept mowed. Otherwise, between the black flies, mosquitoes, ticks and bees – you’d never have been able to seek me here.

But we are not there yet.

Jacques, what do you mean we aren’t there yet? We are on the very end of the spit of land.

Daughter, keep turning.

This marker. This one must surely be it, right?

Keep turning.

This is the third side of the harbour. Where are you, Jacques?

Keep turning.

Another cross, but Jacques, you can’t be here because these dates represent the final battles and fall of Louisbourg.

WHERE ARE YOU?

Keep turning.

Look towards town.

Daughter, daughter, I’m here!

Right here!

What, where?

I’m in that meadow, caressed lovingly by the wind.

There are graves all around you.

Daughter, many are buried here. In the meadow, in the grass, and some, now in the sea.

Thousands of people died at Fort Louisbourg. The town was only 32 blocks, in total, with the hospital and Bastion taking much of that land.

Those little cemeteries filled rapidly, so most of us, and all of us in later years were buried here, mostly in hastily dug unmarked graves.

Daughter, it matters not the exact spot, because I am no longer here anyway.

What matters is that you came to find me.

And you are with me. Your soul has joined mine, if even for a bit.

It is time for you to go back to town.

Back to Louisbourg.

Back to where you are sleeping.

Back.

You followed the Ruins path. You followed the cemetery path. You found me.

My child, this is a beautiful, peaceful, day. You’ve made many unknown soldiers happy here.

Merci, merci, for your kindness. Your dedication.

But now it is time.

You must return. It is not your time yet, nor your place to rest.

Keep walking.

One foot in front of the other.

There is more for you to find, another day, another place.

We are warriors together now.

Oh, daughter, I saw you cry. I cried with you.

I saw you, and I know you heard me as I whispered to you on the wind.

I thought no one would ever come to visit me. I feared I was forgotten, lost forever.

Most of the people laid to rest in the mass graves, and the hundreds of single graves, each and every one lost to time, now unknown. Young men’s families back in France never knew that they died or what became of them. Sometimes, there was no time for even wooden crosses.

Ocean voyages, even on the most solid ships, claimed the lives of about 1 in 10 men, and that’s on a good journey. Hurricanes or worse yet, the plague or other sickness from bad water and rotten food claimed many more.

Sigh. Indeed, I did go to the hospital, just a few hundred steps shy of the graveyard. An intermediate stop, if you will.

I was an old man though, more than 72 winters, but I don’t know exactly how many for sure. Only the wealthy and Priests could read, so they could interpret God’s word and will for us. But mere peasants and the poor could not read or write.

They wrote our names in the parish books when babies were baptized and people married, or died. Except my name is not there. Not everything got recorded.

If we were baptized in the old country, we had to rely on memory as to the date and year. Those records weren’t in French, but Latin, scribed by the priest. If your parents died when you were young, you could only estimate your age, best case.

So, I don’t really know when I was born. Sometime around 1660 in Paris.

Ahh, Paris, I remember her well. I can still close my eyes, view her beauty and hear the sounds of the markets and sellers on the streets. The lovers, too, along the Seine. Paris was incredibly, breathtakingly beautiful, but also a cruel mistress to the impoverished. For us, serving the king, especially in a foreign land, was our ticket out. Risky, yes, but better than dying in the gutter.

I was a proud soldier and served the King loyally for 17 years at Fort Anne in Port Royal in Acadia. I am a Frenchman, but I am also an Acadian. Of course, my military career was before France lost Port Royal in 1710 and I eventually made my way to Louisbourg.

Port Royal

We’ve walked through Louisbourg now, but let me tell you about Port Royal, my home when I was a young man. Well, at least a younger man, and a soldier in love.

I served for 17 long years, mind you, until that sword thrust into my thigh ended that. I was an officer, a Corporal in the King’s service.

I married the love of my life, stunningly beautiful and charming Francoise Mius. She was different – Mi’kmaq by her mother and French by her father, Philippe Mius, the son of the Seigneur at Pobomcoup. You’d never know he was French, though, because Philippe lived among the Mi’kmaq people and raised his children there. He was one with the Mi’kmaq, who were our allies, partners, friends, and family.

The first French men who arrived here would have perished without the Mi’kmaq.

The first Port Royal was a fort built in the early/mid-1600s on the north side of the river, across from where Fort Anne would be built a few years later.

Like Louisbourg, the fort has been reconstructed today, so you can feel what our life was like in that era.

Our Mi’kmaq brothers taught us how to survive along the shores of the Rivière du Dauphin in the Habitation, across from Fort Anne. Goat Island, in the river beside the original fort, was our lookout location for enemy English ships entering the harbour.

Frenchmen wanted to trade for furs and, of course, convert the Native people to Catholicism.

The Mi’kmaq people wanted to trade for iron pots and such. We became brothers and trading posts were established throughout Acadia.

I was stationed at a fort or an outpost when you were searching for me in the 1693, 1695, 1698,1700, and 1701 census. Remember, I was a French soldier and soldiers weren’t considered to be Acadians. Soldiers weren’t recorded in the census, at least not unless they married an Acadian or Mi’kmaq woman and started a family.

Francoise’s father, after his wife died, was living in Port Royal for a short time in 1686, which was how I met his lovely daughter. By 1687, Philippe had remarried and gone back to live among the Mi’kmaq people, so I had to have been stationed at an outpost in order to have courted and married his daughter.

I married Francoise Mius sometime about 1700. The priest recorded our marriage, but those books have been lost to time.

I was listed in the 1703, 1707, and 1714 censuses at Port Royal because I had married a local woman, and we had started our family. We had four children by 1706, including your wonderful ancestor, our beautiful Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, born in 1703. We called her Charlotte.

Good Lord have mercy, 1707 was a horrific, brutal year.

Those English – always greedy. Always invading.

Always killing our people, our families, and our livestock.

They struck again in June of 1707. Our fourth child had been born just the month before.

Look here. This is where I lived.

Pierre Paul de Labat, military engineer and Lieutenant, drew this map in 1708 and labeled it with the locations of the homes of the people who lived in Port Royal in 1707 when the British struck. He needed to report back to France about our condition, which was, well, horrific.

I don’t know how else to say this. We were burned out – yes, with a month-old child plus three more ages five and under.

Look at location M – “maison de Beaumont, forgeron, brûlée” – burned.

That’s my home, or was, and my blacksmith shop too. Oh, I remember that day all too well.

Look at all those houses, nearly all burned to the ground.

Brûlée

Brûlée

Brûlée

Burned in front of our very eyes as the English ran from house to house with their torches, wickedly and gleefully setting everything afire. Devils, Devils from Hell they were. I still hear the screams and roar of flames in my nightmares.

Everything was reduced to cinders in the space of three or four hours – even the church. Maybe, especially the church, which means we were doomed. After torching the church, our home (27) was next.

The house beside us (38) was the “church,” used for worship since the parish church near the graveyard had already been burned by the British in 1690.

Louis La Chaume, my sergeant, was our near neighbor on the other side (24), with his wife. They left Port Royal right away. He died not long after, but she lived here in Louisbourg, as did a few other of my military brothers. Often, we were all each other had.

Another officer lived where the old Sinclair Inn (orange) is in Port Royal, just a doorway away from our house (red arrow.)

Oh, how we hated the English.

By morning, the entire town was nothing but a pile of cinders.

Who was dead? Where were the living hiding?

Most importantly, where were my wife and children?

The sun rose, colored bright red through the haze of smoke.

Blood red.

Most of the residents near the fort were French soldiers, many of whom had a craft or occupation as well. After this burning, and the next, and the next, the men left alive went to La Plaisance or Les Mines or even Louisbourg to escape the wicked English beasts.

Fort Anne

I walked with you when you visited Fort Anne, where our lives were built and then destroyed by the English. It’s deceptively peaceful today.

Daughter, I saw you there, at the fort, standing on the very ramparts where I stood, looking over the river, keeping a watchful eye.

Searching towards the sea, scanning for the barest hint of sails. Rallying the soldiers from the town to stand ready, just in case.

The mist and fog hung over the waters often.

Old Abraham Dugas’ morais were at left, just across Allain Creek.

You know, Abraham’s original land was right where the fort stands today, before the old fort was expanded and they settled up with his family in 1705.

We desperately needed a new fort. For one thing, our gunpowder couldn’t be kept dry.

The old powder magazine had been dug into the rampart, but it was always wet in there.

Child, when I saw you climb down those steps, I tried my best to dissuade you, but you couldn’t hear me.

I hated that place. It was called “the black hole.”

At one time, our gunpowder was stored there, but then, it became something much more sinister.

There was no ventilation, so it was always moist, if not outright wet.

It was small, tight, and dank with green mold growing on the rocks. It was never, ever, dry.

After the new powder magazine was constructed, this old one found a new purpose. It became the “black hole.” Or prison. With no air movement and no light, a man would lose his mind in there, and some went quite mad.

In June of 1711, the Battle of Bloody Creek massacre took place a dozen miles or so upriver. Between 50 and 150 Wabanaki warriors ambushed about 70 British soldiers, killing several and capturing the rest.

Acadians Guillaume Bourgeois, Jean Comeau, and Pierre LeBlanc of Port Royal; and Germain Bourgeois of Beaubassin and Francois Brassard/Broussard of Chipody, who were passing through Annapolis, were arrested, reportedly for capturing a British soldier.

Germain Bourgeois was held in the Black Hole by the British for several weeks, where he eventually succumbed and died. He was a strong man and held out for a long time, longer than most. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do to help him.

Our priest, Father Durand, was still being held hostage in Boston following the 1710 attack by the British upon Port Royal – although Father Durand’s later entry states that Germain died while being held hostage due to his refusal to take the oath of allegiance.

Even worse yet, because there was no priest, Germain and the others who died never received a proper burial. God rest their souls.

So, look again at this horrific dungeon. Germain was the son of your ancestors, Jacques Bourgeois and Jeanne Trahan.

He died on this floor.

Just the daylight from the door would blind a man.

Maybe they opened it once a day to give the prisoner food, and maybe they didn’t.

The Black Hole was the worst torture imaginable. Worse than death.

I saw you, daughter, and it frightened me for you to be in that horrible place. I know you were uncomfortable too. Please don’t ever go back there. I couldn’t protect him then, and I can’t protect you from that evil now.

I was incredibly relieved when you climbed outside once again and into the sunlight on the parade ground.

This is where we practiced. Not just the French soldiers, but all of the Acadian men, sometimes with our Mi’kmaq allies. We held drills where we mustered all the men who lived within cannon-shot.

Musters were some of my favorite days – everyone working together. We prayed that we would never need those skills we were honing.

From the western side of the ramparts surrounding the fort, we could see the mouth of the Allain Creek, sometimes called a river.

Abraham Dugas was our armorer, so when we needed more land for the fort, he moved from the land where the fort is now and was given the land right across the river, just downstream from the Allain Mill.

We all helped build Abraham’s new house and barn and dyked his marshes. Indeed, our handiwork still stands today, holding back the salt water from his fields.

I stood on Abraham Dugas’s old land, right where you stood, and looked at his new land across the river as I watched where the Riviere Dauphin entered the bay. Abraham was such a good man. I thought of him often after his passing. You know, he built the new Catholic church around 1673, but that was before I came to Acadia. That “new” church was burned in 1690, but we still buried our dead in the cemetery near where the church used to be.

Old Abraham died years ago, after he, too, was burned out and went to live with his son, Claude Dugas.

His son Claude’s land was just down the way, just the other side of Abraham’s, where that spit of land juts out into the river on the left.

See Claude there on the 1710 map? Abraham and Claude Dugas are your ancestors, too, you know.

Across the river, we watched for unexpected activity at the Melanson Village, the closest to the bay.

We could see the Bourg, Doucet, and Levron lands too. All up and down the river towards the sea.

Our friends, the Mi’kmaq, lived across the river, too, although they came and went with the seasons and the hunting.

The Allain Creek and Dauphin River, like all the rivers at Port Royal was tidal, so sometimes there would be mud flats, and a few hours later, rushing water. Always good for fishing, though.

Daughter, I saw you seek out and find the location of my blacksmith shop. Could you smell the heat of the forge today? You sat in the yard and stood over the foundation rocks still in place beneath the soil.

I pounded on my anvil and sweated by my forge there – making horseshoes, nails, hinges, and all sorts of iron fittings for the fort, homes, farms, and ships.

Yes, a part of me still remains there. A piece of my soul.

Did you feel my presence?

We left Port Royal in 1713, sadly, due to the results of poor decisions and neglect years earlier.

The fort had fallen into decay.

A few years earlier, we had let our guard down, and the fort badly needed repair.

Finally, in 1702, a master engineer who specialized in designing and building forts arrived, Pierre-Paul Delabat.

He drew up plans to build a fort worthy of Acadia, but first, he had to move, or expropriate, several families whose land abutted the old fort so that the fort could be expanded into what was the town.

Our new fort would have a low profile, making it less of a target.

We had earthworks to absorb cannon fire and expose approaching attackers.

The fort was on a point of land with the harbour in front, the river to one side, with marshland, the town upstream of the fort, and woods behind with no good way of approaching.

Our fort was built in the shape of a double four-pointed star, with bastions and a dry moat, or ditch between the two. A beauty she would be, but the old fort had to be torn down, which exposed us during the time we had no fort. The new earthenworks were constructed bucket by bucket and cart by cart of stone and dirt. Men were few and the Acadian families also needed to farm.

The Governor was dragging his feet and taking his time – time we didn’t really have.

Understanding our predicament, a force of men from Grand Pre came to assist with our construction of a stone fort, as compared to the earthen one that had failed us earlier.

We only had 100 men and some locals who helped. Look at those walls. We carried every single stone and every single bucket of earth. Backbreaking work, it was.

We estimated that it would take two years, 1703 and 1704, to complete. The French government did contribute, but not enough and not fast enough.

Our own residents contributed 800 livres with which we built a hospital and new church in addition to the work on the fort.

Everyone was unhappy with the commander, Brouillan, for a wide variety of reasons, and those complaints made their way back to France. That man interfered incessantly with everything, but most concerning was his constant interference with Pierre-Paul De Labat, our engineer, who had been appointed to build a new fort that we so desperately needed.

Brouillan had a residence at the fort, as governor, but he somehow swindled Etienne Pellerin out of his land and spent his time, and our money for the fort, to build himself a fine country home with a courtyard, gardens and several outbuildings. We even had to extend Rue St. Antoine to provide easier access from his house to the fort. Pellerin had bought Hogg Island from Jacques Bourgeois, another of your ancestors, a few years earlier.

But that wasn’t the half of it. In this small outpost, Brouillan had a mistress, Jeanne Quisence, Madame de Barat who followed him to Port Royal. I kid you not! She opened a tavern and sold watered-down wine to the soldiers and charged terribly inflated prices. Who was to stop her? Music was even provided by the garrison’s own fifer. An outrage!!

Worse yet, Brouillan was excessively harsh and cruel, torturing our own soldiers and destroying morale. That man was evil, I tell you, pure evil. But such was life in an isolated station.

Finally, he was recalled to France in 1704 to deny these allegations and regain the confidence of the French government. His lies apparently worked because in 1705, he set sail once again for Port Royal, but God lent his hand, and Brouillan died at sea near Chedabucto. Unfortunately, they brought his heart back to Port Royal, but we buried it at the foot of a cross in the upper town, not in our cemetery, and not near the fort.

At least the marshland was eventually returned to the Pellerin family.

However, the slowness of our progress in building our new fort, the size of our forces, the delays caused by Brouillan, plus the dissent within our ranks did not go unnoticed by the British.

To be clear, the French officers IN Port Royal begged for expeditious repairs, but we were ignored and overruled. We warned them.

Sure enough, our worst fears came to pass. We couldn’t defend ourselves well. In 1704, after burning the homes, destroying the crops, killing the cattle, and tearing down the dykes in Grand Pre and Chignecto, the English sailed into the harbor and laid Fort Anne and town of Port Royal under siege, capturing the guard station opposite Ile aux Chevres, or Goat Island as you know it.

They destroyed many of our dykes that kept the salt water out of our farmland and looted the church, supposedly as revenge for Indian attacks in New England.

They kidnapped four Acadians as well. For 17 days we holed up in the fort, awaiting the full-frontal attack we were just sure was coming – but it didn’t – although confusion reigned. When the English were finally satisfied that they had extracted adequate retribution, they left.

Sometimes, during these attacks by the English, our own officers had to give orders to burn the houses, buildings, and even trees near the fort so that the British wouldn’t use them for cover to sneak up on the fort during an attack. At least we had notice to leave, but that was but small comfort.

Anger seethed, though, sometimes beneath the surface, and sometimes not hidden at all.

Soon thereafter, 600 feet of the ramparts were washed away by torrential spring rains. The officers were young and inexperienced and the recruits of “no account.” Brouillan, who died in 1705, was temporarily replaced by Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure, who rehabilitated the 185 soldiers at the fort into a state of health and readiness. Regardless, the fort remained unfinished, and no ships had arrived from France with anything after 1706. We didn’t realize that we were truly on our own.

Illicit trade was secretly taking place with Boston merchants, with Louis Allain being charged.

As a form of self-preservation, Port Royal became a rendezvous for privateers. We had become friendly with the French corsairs – you would know them as pirates – who were more than happy to thin out the English ships near Acadia. Yes, indeed. More than happy.

Captured Englishmen were held at Port Royal, awaiting an exchange agreement for captured Frenchman held in Boston.

Our new governor, Daniel d’Auger de Subercase, arrived in 1706 and immediately went on the offensive against the English, thanks be to God.

One of the first things he did was to take 35 English prisoners to Boston in exchange for our men. Subercase and Massachusetts Governor Dudley were on friendly terms, maybe best described as frenemies – friendly enemies.

You would think we would have been better prepared and expected another attack. Indeed, thanks to Subercase, the fort was being reinforced, but that took time.

The English launched a surprise attack again in May and June of 1707. By this time, all able-bodied men were enrolled in the militia, even though some lived at a considerable distance. Messengers were sent to notify and gather them, and to oppose the advance of the enemy on both sides of the river. The British had landed near Goat Island and more than 320 men were advancing through the woods on both banks.

The two forces met near Allain Creek where Subercase led our men. His horse was shot out from under him. He retreated, but uphill so that the advancing English had to face our fire. They camped at the base of the hill, within half a mile of the fort, and across the river.

We were fortunate that about 60 Canadians just happened to have reached Port Royal just before the English fleet arrived.

By now, more than 500 men had gathered to guard the fort. Guns were mounted on the ramparts. The English militia knew that they had been out-strategized and were presently out-gunned as well.

For several days, the English resulted to guerilla warfare, burning buildings and such, but finally, on the 16^th, they began heavy musket fire. The fort was not breached as the English had expected, requiring their retreat and, then, the next day, their humiliating evacuation of the area back onto their ships.

However, our town was left entirely in ruins.

DeLabat, the engineer, drew a map detailing the burned buildings. The English proudly pointed out that they had burned the great magazine and the church located beside our house. The church, which was actually Villieu’s home, was used for holding church services. They burned many other homes near the north bastion of the fort. They also claimed to have fired from the top of the ramparts into the buildings within the fort.

Labat’s map, drawn after they attacked again in 1708, confirmed for posterity that, indeed, they had burned the make-do church, along with my blacksmith shop next door.

The English returned yet again a few weeks later, but we were able to repel them as the fort expansion proceeded. The French coffers were dry due to the war in Europe, but Subercase, a great leader, sold his own effects, even his clothes, to obtain the continued assistance of the Mi’kmaq.

We knew the English would not be deterred for long, so in the spring of 1708, Governor Subercase began working earnestly to get the fort in tip-top shape. 250 additional hands were brought in to help. We had our own man-of-war ship, the Venus, anchored at the foot of the fort as a deterrent. When France refused to help us build a second one, we cozied up to the privateers who took great pleasure in assisting, bringing their “prizes” back to Port Royal. Indeed, there was more than one way to get things done!

Subercase wrote of them, “The privateers have desolated Boston, having captured and destroyed 35 vessels.” 470 prisoners were brought to Port Royal, causing another problem. “The crowded condition of the people, the lack of sanitary measures, and the intemperate habits of the sailors and soldiers, in this season of riotous abundance, brought on an epidemic of spotted fever, in the autumn of the year, from which over 50 died.”

We also received word that a great force was being gathered at Boston, upon which news Subercase gathered a force of 140 Indians and 75 militiamen from Grand Pre, in addition to our own.

We built a new bomb-proof powder magazine in 1708 with extremely hard stone imported five years earlier from France. Our new magazine held 60,000 pounds of powder for the cannons, which was kept much dryer.

As the only military blacksmith in the town of Port Royal, I was proud to make these hinges, latches and nails to reinforce the door.

This large hook is my handiwork, daughter, similar to ones on church doors in France. That’s how I knew how to craft this one!

My men built that powder magazine so sturdily that it could still be used today. I saw you standing exactly where I stood so many times!

Look, we were so proud of our new powder magazine that we carved the year into the sill, swearing that the English would NEVER take the fort again.

NEVER!

Well, it turns out that never only lasted two years.

Expecting an attack in the spring of 1709, we worked to clear the riverbanks of wood so that trees and brush would not shelter the enemy. We requested reinforcements for the garrison as well but received no word or reinforcements from France. It seemed that France had, in effect, abandoned us.

We constructed new barracks for the soldiers and a new building, 85 feet long, to be used as our new church. We made the fort self-sufficient in the event of another siege, at least as much as possible.

You, my child, stood in the new officer’s quarters that we built. I slept there. It’s now the museum!

In March, 1709, a corsair left her berth at Port Royal and captured nine prizes in just ten days, including prisoners that we expected to exchange after the anticipated British attack.

The only thing that saved us in 1709 is that the British fleet never appeared in New England, having been detained for service in the Spanish war.

We waited, daily expecting another attack from the English, all through 1709 and most of 1710. Word kept arriving that an attack was being planned and we knew it was inevitable – but we never expected the Hell that descended upon us.

In October of 1710, an even more devastating attack occurred – completely overwhelming us. This wasn’t just at attack, it was Armageddon – the full force of the British fleet and the New England one as well.

We had rebuilt the fort as best we could. I still lived in the town of Port Royal on the main street, very near Fort Anne. As an officer, I needed to be near the fort, of course.

The English, sometimes our trading partners out of Boston, and sometimes our enemies, would, could and did arrive at any time. We could see their sails arriving in the Bay of Fundy, then sailing slowly up the Riviere Dauphin. We never knew if they were approaching as friend or foe that particular time, so we always had to be on guard. But we never, ever expected what transpired in 1710.

Francoise and I had a small plot of land, just one arpent, which was enough to have a garden for our vegetables and to graze our 2 cows and 6 hogs. My blacksmith shop was at the top, and the bay was at the end – all town lots were long and skinny.

The powder magazine had been completed, and so were the new barracks. The trees and brush had been cleared along the river, so we had an unobstructed view, but, ultimately, there wasn’t enough time, resources, or men to protect ourselves or Acadia from the evil English. A few ships perhaps, or some Colonia militia, like before, but not the entire English fleet sent to crush our very existence.

On September 24, 1710, the English returned with an entire fleet, 36 transports, 5 warships, two bombardment galleys, and more soldiers than ants. 3400 of them, a combination of men from England and Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, along with Iroquois who had been acting as scouts. They brought more soldiers than we had residents. We only had 1250 people in ALL of Acadia, and many of those were in distant locations like Beaubassin, Les Mines, and Cobequid. In Port Royal, we only had about 450, and all but 100 were women and children.

We were doomed.

Upon some on those British ships were traitorous French deserters from our own fort who told the British that our morale was incredibly low. It was. France was failing us. No, France HAD failed us. No reinforcements arrived. We had either been forgotten or abandoned. It doesn’t matter which because the result was the same. We would pay the price.

We were no longer fighting for France. Now we fought for Acadia, for our very lives and those of our families.

At 2:15, our sentries near Goat Island spotted sails appearing in the river, sailing towards us from the bay. These weren’t boats, they were all ocean-going vessels. We quickly realized they weren’t the long-anticipated French reinforcement ships, nor our privateer friends, and we spied more and more of them.

10, then 15, then 20.

My God how many are there?

The Riviere Dauphin began to look like a port. We couldn’t even see all of the ships, there were so many. Someone later said there were 35, but others said there were more.

I remember a sea of sails that swayed in the wind, creating an uneasy nausea in those of us waiting and anticipating the attack. We scurried to finish as much of the fort as we could at the last minute, preparing for the unknown.

We had less than 300 hungry, ill-equipped men or boys old enough to carry a gun, plus a few of our Mi’kmaq warriors who just happened to be there, plus 20 men from Quebec who were visiting to trade.

Worse yet, three-fourths of our French forces were “raw levies from the cities of France, destitute of military training and completely lacking in enthusiasm.” We dared not allow them far from the fort, or they would disappear and join the other deserters, some of whom, we discovered, had turned traitor and were helping the English.

Alas, those “French soldiers” are lucky I didn’t get my hands on them!

Subercase removed the boats and canoes from the riverbanks where they were normally tied for crossing to the other side, which, of course, reduced morale even further. Provisions, including food, were scarce, even though it was fall. The Governor had been paying for everything, including our soldiers’ food, from his own coffers for the past two years.

While most men would cave, Subercase and we officers would not. We could not yield without a fight, even against overwhelming odds. Even if it meant death. Better to die fighting than live as a coward.

The English clearly knew our strength, or lack thereof, even the layout of our town and homes, and England, their motherland, had not abandoned them like France abandoned us. It’s not that the French monarchy and nobles didn’t know. Subercase both pathetically and heroically wrote, thus, “I have had means by my industry to borrow wherewith to subsist the garrison these two years. I have paid what I could, by selling all my moveables; I will give even to my last shirt, but I fear that all my pains will prove useless, if we are not succoured.”

Yet, bravely, he did not bow to the inevitable, and therefore, neither did we, the officers and soldiers under his command.

We did have at least a little time to prepare, as our Mi’kmaq brothers saw the ships arriving along the Digby Gully and fired upon them, but to no avail, of course. We gathered the women and children inside the fort. The most vulnerable, we put in the black hole for protection. We prayed for their deliverance, and ours.

By October 5^th, the English ships arrived at Goat Island, within sight of Port Royal. I will never forget the sight of that sea of sails entering Digby narrows and blocking the harbour. It was like Hell was arriving.

The next day, they began landing both north and south of Fort Anne and Port Royal. We fired upon them from the fort, of course, but our cannons could not reach their ships in the river, and we had no prayer of summoning the required strength or numbers to prevent their incursion. It wasn’t for lack of spirit. It was for lack of France.

We engaged in a “hot skirmish.”

One of the British commanders attempted to erect a mortar battery in the muddy marshes across Allain Creek, here on Abraham Dugas’s old marshes – and trust me when I tell you that we took great joy in repulsing them.

You stood where they erected their battery, the fort in view just across Allain’s Creek.

Regardless of that small victory, they were surrounding us. Across the river, above the fort, and below. Squeezing us slowly from all sides, tighter and tighter.

The Acadian and Mi’kmaq men engaged in guerrilla-style resistance outside the fort, firing small arms from houses and wooded areas. The Redcoats couldn’t see us well, as we dressed in skins and clothes like the Mi’kmaq that blended with nature. We could spot their red coats easily – and there were red coats everywhere.

Many of our homes were burned.

Again.

Of course, we fired on them from the fort, killing three British, but we were unable to prevent the British on the south side from establishing a camp about 400 yards from the fort – just further up on or across from the Dugas land.

The British landed along the river there, just behind Hillsdale House where you stayed.

They mounted their cannons and guns on the dykes, and pounded the Hell out of the fort every night, their cannons thundering and raining fire upon us.

We returned fire, of course, the deafening roar and blinding flash of the cannon’s discharge blending with the terrible and deadly scream of the bursting shells. And then, there were men’s screams, too.

It wasn’t enough.

The women and children were utterly terrified, praying continuously. We thought sure we would all die. Subercase requested a cease-fire so that the women and children could leave, which he was granted.

Four days later, on October 10^th, Subercase knew we were about to be massacred, along with our families who were now upstream but not out of harm’s way, He sent an officer to the English with a parley flag – but the English nearly killed him, not realizing his mission. He had not been announced in the traditional way, by a drummer. We exchanged officers in good faith, hoping for negotiations.

However, two days later, on the 12^th, the English had advanced to within 300 feet of the fort and opened fire. They were so close that we could hear their voices. They taunted us.

They were this close. THIS CLOSE. They were on the other side of the bushes, and the top of the hill is our rampart.

Not only were they just feet from us, they used a new and very deadly invention for throwing grenades. All morning, the walls of the fort shook with the thunderous discharge of artillery – a murderous ball of hellfire, shells, and bursting grenades raining down upon the devoted few who stood manfully to their guns in a contest with but only one outcome.

Then, eerily, the fire abated, and we waited.

Two English officers could be seen approaching the fort on Dauphin Street bearing a flag of truce. We met them, blindfolded them, and led them in the gate, over the bridge, and to the Governor’s quarters.

The English commander had sent General Subercase a demand for surrender. That was at least better than the massacre that would have ensued otherwise.

The guns remained silent while negotiations ensued. Our future rested with the negotiating skills of Subercase, because it clearly didn’t rest with our ability to win the battle. The only possible saving grace would be the French fleet arriving in the harbour.

Those prayers would not be answered. Now, both God and France had failed us.

By the time the sun set, surrender terms had been reached. Our worst fears were not to be realized. We would not be massacred, and neither would our families. We released the English prisoners at the fort, and the British boats headed upriver to fetch our women and children. Even saying those words to you today, my dear, strikes terror in my heart. The worst thing that the English could have done to us was to harm our families. And we had no choice but to trust them.

We were allowed to keep six cannons and two mortars, but they received the rest of what was inside the fort as spoils of war.

Our men could not hold the fort, although we did our best and lasted for 19 days.

Hostilities ceased while we prepared for surrender. On October 16^th, 1710, the key to the fort was handed by our most revered and gallant Subercase to the enemy.

That key had been forged upon my own hearth. It broke my heart.

As he did so, though, he quipped to Nicholson, the English commander, “hoping to give you a visit next spring.”

Our wives thought sure we would all be massacred, but we were allowed to march out of the fort with full honors, carrying the French flag, our “arms and baggage, drums beating and colors flying,” even in defeat.

Wretchedly clothed, bearing marks of bitter privation, we stood very tall and marched out of the fort with all the honors of war, saluting the English General as we passed through the British lines on our way to the water side of the fort that we had built. All we had left was a small bit of dignity, afforded us by the conquering English.

The English soldiers then marched across the bridge into the fort. We could hear their boots, rhythmically marching in triumph, as they stopped inside to halloo as they hoisted the Union Jack and drank the Queen’s health. Their ships and transports fired salvos of victory. We stood stone-faced, staring into an uncertain future of defeat.

Of course, those were not tears upon our faces.

The French garrison of soldiers, as agreed, was transported to France upon British ships. The surrender terms included specific provisions to protect the Acadian inhabitants. “Inhabitants within the gun range of the fort,” which was three miles, could remain in undisturbed possession of our land for up to two years if we wished, provided we were willing to swear an oath to the British Crown.

And therein lies the problem. That oath. But there was another option.

All French residents could opt to move within those two years to any other French-held territory, such as Ile-Royal or Ile-St. Jean. Of course, you know them as Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island.

Those at a greater distance than three miles were tolerated, or allowed to remain on sufferance.

We decided surrender was a better option than death, because it would have meant the deaths of our entire families too – and for no purpose. By surrendering, we would live to fight another day, and we were hopeful that the English would just go away again and leave a few sentries as they had after past raids.

We just “knew” that the French fleet was just days or maybe weeks away someplace. What we didn’t know is that the French ships bound for Port Royal had been held and relieved of their supplies at Louisbourg. They were desperate there too.

There was no French fleet and no ships to rescue Port Royal.

This defeat was incredibly humiliating for a soldier.

I tried not to cry, but that final march through the graveyard on our way out of the gate near Saint Antoine Street was utterly devastating for a French officer – especially since two of my children were buried there. I felt we had somehow failed each and every one of them. And their graves might well be destroyed.

I’m sorry.

I’m still so sorry.

Could you feel my devastation and heartache when you stood there, at the gate, in Fort Anne?

Did you know that I had marched through it?

I just looked straight ahead, down the street, at my home, or where it used to be, at the wisps of smoke still drifting over the bay from the ruins of Port Royal, and remembered who I was doing this for.

Francoise had taken our children into the woods among her relatives for safety. The British would never find her there.

We had done this so many times. Our home had been burned at least twice. But this time was different, because now the English were in charge.

There was at least a little preservation of dignity, but this was the end of French Acadia. Indeed, were it not for our small children, I would have moved to Beaubassin right away. Of course, my thigh injury was another consideration.

Our Priest, Justinien Durand baptized our baby Marie in May of 1706 and Charles in October 1715.

When the fort fell, he attempted to help by reuniting the Acadian settlers “in the upper region of the river” beyond that three-mile marker to protect them from the terms of capitulation requiring that despised oath of allegiance. Considered seditious by the British, Father Durand was taken prisoner in January 1711 and transported to Boston. Later that year, he was returned in a prisoner exchange.

The next few weeks were, at best, confusing.

I wasn’t required to return to France because I was married to a local woman and had a family. Not to mention, a blacksmith could certainly be useful to the British. We held out hope for some time that French ships would arrive to save us, but even hope dies eventually.

Most of the French soldiers, four years without pay or supplies, were more than happy to be taken back to France and deposited on French soil, even if it was in a British warship. Had I not married, I would have been glad to return to find my fortune elsewhere, too.

I and a few other French soldiers had married the daughters of Acadians, or Mi’kmaq. Some of those soldiers sailed away, abandoning their families, and others remained. Life was not by any means easy, as we were under constant suspicion and scrutiny.

We had no idea that day in the fall of 1710, as the fields begged for harvesting and we fought for our lives, that this surrender was prophetic. Nearly half a century later, in 1755, the other shoe fell. The English would deport all of the Acadian families in an act of cultural genocide called Le Grande Derangement, or simply, the Expulsion. Three years later, the French flag was lowered for the last time in Louisbourg, too.

In 1710, we did not take defeat well, nor accept that it was permanent.

In June of 1711, a few miles upstream, British soldiers were ambushed on the Riviere Dauphin near Forest Creek, thereafter known as Bloody Creek, and killed. Some say the ambush occurred by the Indians, some say the Acadians, some say both. Reports vary, but at least 16 and perhaps as many as 30 were killed, and nine injured.

This incident ballooned the Acadians’ hope, spurring more than 600 Acadian, Mi’kmaq, and Abenaki men to gather and blockade Fort Anne, which had been reduced to about 120 English soldiers, none of whom wanted to be there. Even lacking artillery, the sheer Acadian and Mi’kmaq numbers and commitment made an impression upon the fort, although the blockade was clearly unsuccessful. Acadian pleas for assistance to the Governors of Canada and Placentia had gone largely unanswered, although about 200 reinforcements were sent but had to be recalled immediately to protect their own homes.

Elated and buoyed by hope, the Acadians still living within three miles of the fort flocked to a safe distance on the premise that the recent actions of the commander freed them from the oaths that had been required of them.

But, alas, it didn’t matter and came to nothing.

In April of 1713, The French officially ceded Acadia to England in the Treaty of Utrecht, dashing our last hopes of redeeming Port Royal.

Eight days after the official handover, 258 French men, women, and children boarded three British vessels that were bound for either France or Placentia, which is Newfoundland today. French troops returned to the garrison on Ile-Royale, Louisbourg, which had not been ceded, and began fortifications.

That was the last straw – the end of me living in Port Royal, my daughter.

I sold my land along what was then Dauphin Street but is now St. George Street to John Adams of Boston in 1713. The English were permanently in charge. There was no point in remaining near the fort. We were safer upriver, further from continuous warfare. Everything in Nova Scotia, except for Île-Royale, what you call Cape Breton Island, and Louisbourg, had been officially ceded to the British.

We needed to leave Port Royal.

Father Pain, a missionary at Grand Pre, wrote to Governor Costabelle in 1713, expressing what we were all feeling. He spoke for all of us when he said:

“We shall answer for ourselves and for the absent, that we will never take the oath of allegiance to the Queen of Great Britain, to the prejudice of what we owe to our King, to our country, and to our religion.”

The Governor then asked the residents of Nova Scotia to leave their homes and remove to Cape Breton, where France had begun building the great fortress of Louisbourg. Most Acadians were unwilling to exchange the rich fields they had worked so long to salvage from the seawater for the rocky soil of Cape Breton, where farming wasn’t possible. We told the Governor that even though we lived under the British flag, we remained faithful subjects to the King of France.

Acadians are tenacious and steadfast, if nothing else.

In 1713, Francoise and I weren’t ready to remove from the region entirely, but we did move up the river to the BelleIsle community, near the Brun and Breau lands.

The Breau and Brun marshes at BelleIsle were not far from Julien Lore/Lord.

Indeed, I worked Julien Lord’s land, here, where you stood.

In 1721, my daughter, your ancestor, Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, married his son, Jacques Lore/Lord.

They lived on Julien’s land, probably building a house nearby.

I chuckled as I saw you smiling and standing inside the outline of their homestead, now grown over with grass and blending with the rest of the field.

You can see that there was a lot of morais to work at BelleIsle, so everyone could use another hand and especially, a blacksmith. We didn’t plan to stay very long.

In 1714, the English took a census, the only one they ever took. They were trying to find out where all of the remaining French and Acadians were living. We weren’t terribly cooperative.

I was listed by my dit name, Beaumont, with my wife, 1 son, and 3 daughters.

After 1710 and especially after 1713, there had been a lot of displacement, with many Acadians moving away from Port Royal. Our neighbors were the Bruns and Breaus, Marc Pitre, Jean Dubuy, Alexandre Commeau, Laurent Doucet, Maistre Jean and Jacques Nantais (Nantois) whose surname in Acadia was Levron/Leveron. Lots of the families who lived within 3 miles of the fort had moved upriver anyplace they could find.

In 1710, the English required us to leave unless we took that loyalty oath, but by 1714, they realized the folly of their ways. They would have starved without us. In fact, they refused to allow us to leave. Vetch, the English governor, reported that there were about 500 families in “L’Accdy and Nova Scotia” and that ALL of them, except for two families from New England, wanted to and were preparing to move.

We were certainly among them, as we all prepared for what we felt sure was a certainty.

There were another 500 families in Louisbourg, plus 7 companies of soldiers. The French King had provided 18 months of provisions, ships, and salt to encourage more families to settle there.

Vetch told the British that if all of us left for Isle Royal, all of Acadia would be empty. Entirely empty. Vacant. There would be no one left for the British to rule, and no one left to feed them either. Even the Indians said they would move with us.

The English had bitten off far more than they could chew.

Louisbourg would be the largest French colony in the New World, threatening the very existence of the British in a peopleless Acadia. This thought still makes me laugh!

Vetch even admitted that “100 Acadians (who knew the woods, could use snowshoes, and knew how to use birch canoes) were more valuable than 5 times as many soldiers fresh from Europe” and that Acadians were also excellent in fishery.

French officers, speaking for the French king, threatened that we would be treated as rebels if we didn’t move.

Vetch was beginning to panic, noting that some Acadians, those without many possessions, had already moved. No one planted any crops because we all prepared and expected to leave.

In an act of desperation, Vetch prohibited us from leaving, but the last thing we wanted to do was stay. His edict made us even more determined. We tried making our own boats, but the English confiscated them. We tried to cut a road to Les Mines, but they stopped us.

All of a sudden, everything had switched around, and the British who insisted we leave, forbade it, and we, who insisted four years earlier that we weren’t going anyplace, had not only made peace with the idea, but now welcomed it. Let the damnedable English starve! We relished that idea, too, truthfully.

Given that the English had no need for a French Corporal in Acadia, 1710 ended my 17 years of service to the King, meaning that I arrived in Acadia about 1693. I don’t remember exactly when I arrived or exactly when my injury occurred, so I could have arrived a couple of years earlier and been injured in one of the earlier 1707 or 1708 incursions, too. It’s difficult to remember after more than 300 years.

After my injury, I couldn’t tend the fields well either, so I served as the local blacksmith wherever we lived. That means that I didn’t have or need land to farm, so the transition to Louisbourg for me was less disruptive than for farmers.

I did, however, need to live in close proximity to other Acadian families. There was safety and help in numbers.

After the Treaty of Utrecht was solidified in 1713, Father Durand and the other priests, in conjunction with the French government, encouraged Acadian families to move to areas that remained French. The British placed increasing obstacles in place. In reality, we preferred to stay if we could retain our property and practice our religion. The English recognized that they needed our labor to feed them, so we held out hope that things would resolve.

We weren’t, absolutely were NOT going to take that oath, though.

We stayed near Port Royal, in the Annapolis River Valley, among Francoise’s family for several more years. I had no family in Acadia, of course, other than my fellow soldiers, so having her family nearby was important. We maintained the dykes together, built barns and houses as a community, and took care of one another in good times as well as bad.

It seemed that the grim reaper was always knocking at the door – sometimes in the form of illness and sometimes disguised as the English.

Between 1701 and 1715, Francoise bore eight children, and we buried at least two in the cemetery by the fort.

After we moved to BelleIsle, we worshipped at St. Laurent, the Mass House there.

Our younger children who died were buried in the lost cemetery by the little church where our Marie Charlotte was married. God rest their souls.

Their graves, located someplace in this woods, are unmarked too, and far from me now.

New Frontiers

In April of 1720, another new English governor arrived in Acadia, determined to obtain that oath. Father Durand immediately visited, along with a delegation of our men, to explain exactly why we could not and would not take that oath. We were hoping he would understand and a reasonable compromise could be reached.

Father Durand was told by Governor Philipps to publish the proclamation requiring everyone to take the oath on pain of having to leave the province within four months. Father Durand did as he was told, but he then went to Louisbourg on behalf of the Acadians to seek the advice of Saint-Ovide Monbeton, the governor of Île-Royale.

On his departure, Father Durand wrote to Philipps that he had left his parishioners “entirely free to take whatever decision they considered advantageous.” He asked permission to retire to Île-Royale (Cape Breton Island) “in order,” he said, “that any troubles that arise will not be imputed to me.” Durand’s action seems to have contributed to Philipps failure to obtain the oath of allegiance from the Acadians in 1720, and during the following decade.

Indeed, we were furious with Phillips and consequently, many of us or our children eventually made our way to French-held territories. Either then or shortly thereafter. It took a lot of courage to walk away from your land and the life you and your parents had built in exchange for the unknown and an entirely uncertain future, often in places where the farming techniques you know aren’t applicable.

That’s why most of our people moved to other locations with tidal rivers that empty into the Bay of Fundy that had similar marshes where dyking fields would work in the same way.

Places in the Minas Basin like Cobequid and Pisiquid, along with Beaubassin, Chignecto and Grand Pre.

You found me in Louisbourg, although you had to search near and far, high and low. I know Louisbourg was far from Port Royal. You questioned whether that was actually me, on yet another frontier, far away from where you expected me to be. Indeed, it was, my life was, quite a journey!

I heard you say, standing near my grave, that I was brave to strike out for New France when I was young.

I have a confession, my dear, heart to heart.

I wasn’t brave. I was terrified. A mere child, an orphan who had been living on the filthy streets of Paris. Serving the King in New France offered me the opportunity to escape that rotten, stinking hellhole where food was scarce, family was nonexistent, and one slept in whatever cold doorway one could find, among the feces in the street. Life was nothing more than begging for scraps. Scraps of food, scraps of clothing, scraps of anything, and being eaten alive by vermin and fleas.

Whatever awaited had to be better, even if it was a swift death beneath the waves.

Winter ocean crossings were too difficult, and no captain would attempt them. Warm weather crossings were subject to both piracy and hurricanes. Ships were anything but safe. Yet, I was young and hopeful, and this was my life’s big adventure. I never thought about what a future on the distant shore might bring. I dared not entertain the possibility that I had a future. If I survived to arrive there, it had to be an improvement.

I never dreamed that I might one day marry and have children who were the love of my life – my legacy.

Acadia wasn’t safe either. In March and April 1690, the British out of the New England colonies plundered and burned Acadia, the latest in what seemed like an endless stream of attacks. Our 70 men had no officers to lead them. None of our 18 cannon were mounted in position as the fort’s walls were unfinished. What little resistance we could muster was no match for their 7 vessels, including a frigate of 40 guns, armed with 700 men. Our priest negotiated the best terms possible, garnering favorable surrender terms. The soldiers in the garrison were to be carried to France with their arms and baggage. The inhabitants were to retain their lands, the church spared, and the people permitted to worship unmolested.

However, Phipps, the English commander, was infuriated when he realized just how shrewd our priest had been, and the weakness of the fort. Had he known, he would have given nothing, so the English proceeded to break into the priest’s house, strip the church, pull down the altar and cross, then plunder and burn whatever was left. They even stole the Governor’s purse before loading him up, along with his followers and the priest, and took them to Boston, where they were thrown into prison.

The Acadian men were forced to sign a loyalty oath to the King of England. Acadians, most of whom had never seen France and were intensely loyal to their families, tried to remain neutral but, ultimately, were unsuccessful. They were forced to sign.

Sadly, reinforcements, supplies, help, stores for the fort, French soldiers for the garrison, and two officers, Villebon and Saccardie, arrived in Port Royal just days later. By this time, the English were gone, having set up a council of Acadians who swore to administer affairs under the English flag.

Villebon left shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, two pirate ships, having heard about the defenseless conditions, burned 16 houses across the river on the Granville shore and sailed upriver, where they burned a dozen more, including one with a mother and child. They hanged two more, looted the entire settlement of the stores that had just arrived, and kidnapped Saccardie and the former Governor.

Infuriated, Villebon returned in 1691, hauled down that detested English flag, and, in the presence of the Acadians, took possession of the fort in the name of the King of France!

It was in this troubled timeframe that I arrived.

The French were disillusioned with Acadia by this time, describing Fort Royal as “no more than a paltry town, somewhat enlarged after 1689 by the accession of inhabitants who had left the French shores of Maine owing to the war. Port Royal is only a handful of houses two stories high and has but few inhabitants of any note. It subsists upon the traffic of the skins which the savages bring hither to truck for European goods.”

That’s not exactly how things were in Port Royal. The English had not destroyed the mills as they were upriver in the hills, outside the reach of tidal marshes. Settlers at Mines and Grand Pre supplied Port Royal until she could stand on her own feet once again. The only communication was via water, although in 1701, Grand Pre residents committed to cut a road 30 miles towards Port Royal for easier communication.

Acadians had organized six companies of militia and armed ourselves with weapons as best we could. Commanders were sent in 1697 and 1698 when France once again officially took possession of Acadia. At that time, Villebon was rebuilding Fort LaTour at the mouth of the St. John River but shifted to construct a fort at Fort Royal that would require a garrison of 400 men. Unfortunately, he died in 1700 before Port Royal’s fort was finished.

Villebon wrote in his letters to France that, now, Port Royal was the general trading center for the whole country. People were well supplied with food and had a surplus for sale. Many spars, or ship’s masts, were sent to France. The wool was good, people were dressed in their own homespun, and fruits, pulse, and garden produce were excellent. Provisions were cheap – beef at two cents a pound, a pair of chicken for ten cents, eggs five cents a dozen, cattle six to eight dollars each.

That 1690 oath and subsequent abandonment of Port Royal by the English bought the French and Acadians time – a great deal of time, although not necessarily peaceful.

Actually, not peaceful at all.

After the 1690 incursion and burning of their homes, many of the Acadian families had moved upriver where the view of the river was better, the swamps that could be drained and farms were larger, and it was more difficult for the English to reach them there.

You already know what happened in 1707 and 1708 and our crushing battle in 1710.

After the 1710 surrender of Fort Anne, the British tried to evict the French and Acadians, but soon realized they needed us. At first, they told us we had to leave, but we didn’t want to. Then we wanted to leave, but they told us we couldn’t. The British were both maddening and confusing – and they called US ungovernable and stubborn.

In 1715, the Fort’s gates were shut and locked, preventing trade with anyone, including Native people.

Have I mentioned how confusing this period was?

In 1717, British Captain John Doucette became the Lieutenant Governor of Acadia. Don’t be confused, because even though he had a French surname, he didn’t speak French and wasn’t.

By this time some Acadians had decided to stay put on peaceful terms. When the Indians learned about this, they threatened us. Though they had always been friends, and in Françoise’s case, relatives, the Indians didn’t want the Acadians defecting to the English side. This was especially awkward for our family, because now, the English and Mi’kmaq both suspected us of being treasonous.

Doucette, the fort commander, demanded that we take the oath or leave, but we feared it would tie us down … and we still wanted to move. If we were to stay, we needed protection from the Indians, who were now very angry, and the oath would have to be constructed so Acadians would not have to fight their own countrymen. But Doucette insisted on an unconditional oath which we, again, refused to sign.

On May 9, 1720, those who had become British subjects were offered free exercise of their religion, guarantee of their property, and their civil rights. Official notices were translated into French to be distributed, a policy that continued from 1720 to 1755. An offer was made that we could leave, but not take any of our possessions with us.

We answered that we feared the Indians if we took the oath and promised to be faithful and peaceful if we could stay. Acadians explained that they couldn’t leave in the year allotted by the treaty because no one would buy their land, although it wasn’t clear that they could sell their rights to the land anyway.

The French government wanted us to move, but the land at Louisbourg was poor. Conversely, the English government was underhandedly forcing us to stay. The English didn’t want to lose their source of supplies and the Acadians were hard to control…the more distant Minas Acadians even more so than the Port Royal Acadians.

This truly was the drama that never ends.

General Phillips arrived later in 1720 and issued a proclamation that we must take the oath unconditionally or leave the country in 3 months. He also said we couldn’t sell or take with us any of our property, thinking that would force us to take the oath.

He clearly didn’t know us and underestimated our resolve.

We still refused, explaining as if to a child, that the Indians were threatening. When we suggested the compromise of “let us harvest our crops and use vehicles to carry it,” Philipps figured that we were planning on taking our possessions too, and refused.

We were determined, and felt that our only route of “escape” was by land, so Acadian families in Minas began carving a road from Minas to Port Royal, about 70 miles.

The governor issued an order that no one should move without his permission, and he even sent an order to Minas to stop work on the road.

The English stated that the Acadians desired to take the Port Royal cattle to Beaubassin, about 200 miles today by road or 150 miles by water. Beaubassin was a fortified French possession where many Acadians lived.

Philipps, quite exasperated, pronounced the Acadians ungovernable, stubborn, and that we were directed by bigoted priests. We wore this badge with honor!

Philipps went on to say that the Acadians couldn’t be allowed to go because it would strengthen the population of their French neighbors. The Acadians were also needed to build fortifications and to produce supplies for the forts. He stated that Acadians couldn’t leave until there were enough British subjects to be settled in their place. Adding that he hoped that there were plans being made to bring in British subjects. He expected problems from the Indians, who didn’t want the Acadians to move.

Instead, France responded by starting to send people to Ile-Royal. The fort at Louisbourg was begun in 1720. Other French settlements in the region included St. Pierre near the Straight of Canso, which had slate mines, and Niganiche, further north on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a fishing port.

Francoise and I had no land, so we considered leaving for Beaubassin, but decided to try to remain near Port Royal as our older children began marrying.

Francoise died about this time – I don’t remember what year exactly – but I was left with children, no wife, and a disability. Our youngest son, Charles, who had been born in 1715, died too. I was overcome with grief and hopelessness.

In 1718, my oldest daughter, Francoise, was married to Pierre Olivier by Father Durand. There was little joy left in our lives, but on August 24^th, 1719, my first grandchild, Marie Josephe Olivier was born, and I stood at the baptismal font in the Mass House at BelleIsle with her, both as her grandfather and godfather, along with your ancestor, Marie Charlotte Bonnevie as her godmother. Our blessed Father Durand baptized her as we pledged to protect her and raise her in the Catholic church. Those vows are sacred.

My heart was joyful, but the tears that streamed down my cheeks were also sorrowful, as my dearly beloved wife was watching from the next world.

Things only got worse.

By 1720, everyone was upset and everyone was mad at everyone else, including the Indians who were afraid we, the French and the Acadians would betray them.

Once again, I was afraid. Our churches had been burned and our graveyards destroyed. Not everyone was buried in consecrated land. Sometimes there was no priest. Our life was coming unraveled.

By 1720, Port Royal had been renamed Annapolis Royal. We were told that we had to sign another oath or leave, with absolutely nothing.

Ultimately, only one daughter, Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, stayed near Annapolis Royal.

In 1721, she married Jacques Lore the son of another French soldier, and lived her life along the Riviere Dauphin, renamed the Annapolis River, on the Lore or Lord land. Ahhh, that was a good and honorable marriage. She’s your 5^th great-grandmother.

Charlotte, thanks be to God, died before Le Grande Derangement in 1755, so she didn’t have to endure that. While some of her children are lost to history, at least four eventually made their way to Quebec. But then, my child, you know that, because you descend from her son, Honore Lore.

I saw you standing by their well on our old land. You searched hard to find the pieces of my life.

Eight years later, my only remaining son, Jacques Bonnevie, my son who was also a blacksmith, married Marguerite Lore/Lord. Both she and Jacques Lore/Lord were children of Julien Lord dit Lamontagne and Anne Charlotte Girouard.

It’s not surprising that the rock you so lovingly took home from this well was bog iron, formed in the roots of the swamp along the river that was turned into farmland. A perfect fit for a blacksmith like me and my son, Jacques. We gladly took any bog iron they found.

Jacques and Marguerite chose to stay and live along the river upstream from what had been Port Royal, at least for a while.

By 1720, there was no future for us at or even near Annapolis Royal. My children were beginning to make their way to French colonies outside the Annapolis River Valley. There was opportunity in the more distant settlements, like Beaubassin, where our daughter, Francoise Bonnevie moved with her husband Pierre Olivier not long after 1722. She remarried there to Jean Pierre Helie in 1741.

It crushed my heart to know that Francoise, her husband, son, daughter-in-law and at least two grandchildren all drowned on the ship, the Violet, when it sunk at sea during the Acadian Expulsion in 1758.

My youngest daughter, Marie Bonnevie, was living in Beaubassin with her sister before she married Francois Duguay in 1738. I was there with them in spirit that day, too. She, along with her husband and their seven children, likely perished on the ship with her sister, Francoise, in 1758.

While I welcomed them to the hereafter, my heart screamed for their agony and fear. Yes, we can still see and be with our family, even if you aren’t aware.

Son Jacques Bonnevie also moved to Beaubassin, but not until 1742, after I had already passed from this realm. Until then, he remained near the Lord/Lore family just west of BelleIsle. During the Expulsion, he was initially deported to South Carolina, but and was captured by the English. He was last found in 1761 being held as a prisoner at Fort Edward, in Pisiguit, with his family. God rest his soul.

Some of his children were lost to history, and some were deported to France, while others were scattered about in Canada. One daughter, Marie, was crippled but managed to stay with her older sister in exile.

History was not kind to my children.

Beaubassin kept in touch with Fort Louisbourg. Both were French outposts, not British.

This brings me back to 1720.

By 1720, I was about 60 years old, already an old man by the standards of that day. Without land, and without the ability to maintain dykes and work that land, I needed some sort of income. We were required to leave if we refused to sign that damnable oath – and I refused. I would rather die. My children were adults now, so I made my way to Louisbourg, the busiest port in New France, focused on fishing and trade, not farming. Not to mention, it was French, NOT British. I was done living under the thumb of the British that had cost us so much.

I also had a marketable skill – blacksmithing.

No land, no ability to work land, grown children, and a blacksmith’s trade which meant I needed to be in a rather populated area. Yes, Fort Louisbourg was a better fit for me.

Plus, if I needed a pension from the King of France for my service, I would most assuredly have to be living in a French location with regular ships back and forth to France. How else would I ever receive my pension or rations?

Not only that, but the town of Louisbourg was fortified and much more compact than the Acadian settlements up and down the river east of Annapolis Royal. You could walk everyplace and didn’t need a boat or canoe.

The Fort had a French governor and a Catholic Chapel in the garrison walls, not to mention a proper jail too.

This fort was well-guarded by a rotation of French soldiers, and fishermen and sailors from around the world were in and out on a daily basis. There was always someone interesting to talk to – to chew the fat with and discover what was happening elsewhere.

By 1726, we had almost 1300 people living within the fort walls, plus the sailors on the ships anchoring in the bay. By 1734, there were 1600, and in 1737, there was a total of 2,023, 65% of whom were civilians and 35% were soldiers.

Imagine that!

We were a bit cozy though. All residents lived in the 32 blocks enclosed within the fort, minus the block for the hospital and the soldiers who lived in the barracks. That means that in 1737, an average of 65 people lived in each block.

Not to brag, but Louisbourg was the third busiest port in all of North America.

Ships came and went all manner of the day and night. They brought news from France. La Rochelle was our closest port!

The English were always “interested” of course, but Louisbourg was much easier to defend and much better prepared. The city was built entirely within the fort, which was protected by two and a half miles of fortified walls, if you walked all the way around the perimeter.

Those walls took 28 years to build and were surrounded by a moat, with cannons mounted at the top.

Just let the British try to take that!

Indeed, we were safe there.

With my limp and uneven gait, I could walk those blocks, end to end in the city, if I needed to. In fact, on wooden floors, you could always hear me coming!

Fort Louisbourg was safe, and an old soldier like me wasn’t alone. My pension would buy me a bowl of soup, some used clothes from time to time, and a place to sleep by the fire.

I had nothing else. There was no probate when I died, but then again, I didn’t need anything else.

I Walk With You

You came!

My child, I saw you walking where I walked.

Standing at the altar where I knelt to pray.

Stepping inside the jail and praying that I was never held there. Thanks be to Mary, I was not, but I am so very touched that you cared, even some three centuries removed.

I saw you with your soup served in a pewter bowl, partaking where I ate my rations as well, the vegetables all picked from the communal gardens.

Sitting at hand-hewn tables on stools and benches with no backs.

Watching out the window to see who was passing by. We did the same.

Like me, you lost part of a tooth there – although you said that yours can be “fixed,” whatever that means. When I lived, our teeth rotted and fell out if we were lucky. Having them yanked was much worse than falling out and if your tooth hurt to the point where you needed a poultice, you just might die of toothache. Today you have magic pills that help you not die of things we died of. I think they must be blessed by your Priests.

I could no longer serve as a soldier, but I could work in the blacksmith shop and eventually, I could help with other things.

As you walked in my footsteps, I saw you touching the well that sustained us. We drew water for all of the families and residents within the fort.

I touched those stones and drew life-giving water from this very well hundreds of times.

I could tell that you felt my presence there, although I don’t think you knew it was me.

The cannons fired, and the soldiers kept constant watch over the ramparts. No sneak attacks by the British there. Thanks be to God.

I saw you stare across the harbor – a good and safe harbor it was. I saw the joy on your face when you realized that you had been sleeping directly across the water from where I slept then and where I rest now. Not far, but so close to my heart. I saw you clutch your heart, too.

And then, I saw even more.

You asked where the cemetery was, where the hospital was, and people kept telling you it was gone.

But you knew better because I had whispered in your ear. “I’m not gone.” You thought it was just the wind.

The hospital does lie in ruins now, and no one ever goes out there except to dig in the ruins sometimes and cut the weeds with your funny-looking scythe.

The gate on that side of the “city” is gone too, now just a mound and a swampy area that was the moat when I walked those streets. I saw you laugh and proclaim that nothing, anyplace here, is flat. Truth, my child. Truth.

Our floors were mud and, in some cases, rocks. Well, except for the governor’s residence and some merchants, but that’s entirely different.

Everything was dark, damp, and very cold in the winter. Frozen, with no insulation. We couldn’t put on enough clothes or cover with enough blankets.

I would love to have one of your hand-made quilts, my child, especially the French one you made for your beloved Acadian cousin.

In Louisbourg, it was dark inside buildings, even when the sun was highest in the sky, and quite moist, sometimes dripping water. Even in the summer. The insects ate us alive, but we wore clothes that covered our entire bodies, which helped to fend off those thirsty critters.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the other realm now, but I can’t smell people anymore. Back then, everyone smelled what you call “ripe,” but it was normal for us. We bathed only if we absolutely had to. Some said that bathing caused sickness so no one was eager to take a bath. Bathing was to be avoided at all costs.

People wore the same clothes until they fell off, sometimes changing our underlinens, which is how we kept clean. Soldiers slept in a communal bed. So did many families. What you call “privacy” was unheard of, and what you refer to as “hygiene” was a foreign concept to us.

The only person with a “toilette” was the Governor, who had a special chair and servants to empty it.

The rest of us did what we needed to do or had a chamber pot that got thrown out the window into the streets each morning. Be careful where you walk.

Such was life in Acadia, and Louisbourg in particular.

The older I got, the more my body ached each winter. I sat close to the fire – as close as was safe, anyway. I shivered a lot and hated the snow, gray, and fog, as you do.

Louisbourg was a safe harbour with ships from many nations, but it also was subjected to many storms.

Hurricanes came right up the coastline from the Caribbean to New England, then on into Nova Scotia, stripping vegetation, flattening, and killing everything in their path. The same with winter storms. Any ships caught out were in imminent danger of sinking, and many did. Ice bashed ships into the rocks. Those of us in the village stayed inside as best we could until the storm had passed, often praying.

Some lucky people stayed inside for the entire winter, only venturing out 4 or 5 times from freeze to thaw.

For each of us, those pages keep turning. I had a lot of pages in my life – more than 26,600.

From 1733 until August of 2024, when you were here with me, more than 105,000 pages turned. It took many lifetimes until you came to find me.

After you saw where I lived my life for perhaps two score years, I saw you look out into the distance from the village. Your eyes searching the horizon.

I saw you walking with a limp, much like mine. It was hot that day, oh so hot.

I told you it was enough that you had come at all – that you did not need to find the trailhead. That you did not need to walk alone. That you did not need to walk down to Rochefort Point where the graves lay – at least the ones that have not washed out to sea.

That I wanted you to be safe and without pain, but you did not hear my pleadings. Or chose not to.

You saw into the distance and knew what direction to walk.

The isolated Ruins Walk.

No one is there. At least no person in your realm.

What if you fall?

What if the bees sting you, and you perish where I died?

No one will know where you are or how to help you. I heard you mutter that the thing in your hand to talk to people through the air isn’t working here.

You are truly isolated and alone.

No, daughter…No.

I can see your pain as you walk slowly, with a fierce determination, towards me.

What if? What if?

No, no, my daughter, go back.

It’s enough that you came.

But you did not turn around. You did not go back.

Step by painful step, you continued.

First, you found the Sisters’ house and chapel. Yes, indeed, the Sisters were sent to convert and educate everyone. Bless their hearts, they tried. It was a fort town full of soldiers and sailors!

It was a Sister who last sat with me. Then my dear, sweet Francoise came to me. Reached out to me from the other side, and I was ready to take her hand and go with her.

Next, you found the three Brothers who lived right beside the hospital. All the better to give last rites at a moment’s notice. Actually, there were more than three of them, but that matters not.

You noticed that not all the ruins are gone. Even some of the wood remains. It was here when I was here.  I saw you touch it as if you were touching me – through time.

Today, the ruins are far from the restored area of the fort, but when I lived, the hospital was within the walls.

I saw you tarry there for a long time. I could almost reach you through the thin mists of time. Almost, but not quite. I know you felt me there. I saw the tears stream down your face. You lifted your hand with your mother’s ring so that she could see too.

You came a long way daughter – a very long way. Across years and thousands of leagues. You spent years finding me, discovered that I existed, then made your way to me. I’m grateful, and my heart is full – but please go back to safety now.

I saw you turn, but not towards the fort.

More bees. I didn’t want you to risk being stung without your protective medicine in that pouch you carry. I know you were hesitant, too, but then I saw you head towards the sea, the more overgrown area.

No. No! Go back!

You, my child, are clearly French and Acadian – so very tenacious and, well, stubborn.

Yes, I said it.

You didn’t realize that the glorious old gate stood in front of you – at one time painted gold like the gold of the King’s crown. Meant to impress all who entered or even just sailed by. I’ll tell you, it was impressive indeed. One could make the journey to Louisbourg overland, but it was much more difficult and treacherous than by sea, following the coastlines.

Waterways were our highways.

When you arrived at the opening that had at one time been the Maurepas Gate, you stopped and marveled. Then you realized what you were looking at. Today, just overgrown piles of dirt with a swamp on the outside. That’s all that’s left of the moat that protected the walls with the cannons mounted on the ramparts.

Beyond the old city gate, the path narrowed, and the vegetation grew more dense. Had the signs not told you that the burials and mass graves were in that direction, you’d never know anything had been there.

But you did know, and you were determined. My heart softened as I witnessed every step of your journey to find me.

How could I not love you?

When you “arrived” in the area by the sea, I tried to tell you where to look, but there was so much to see. You didn’t realize I had such a beautiful, albeit desolate, burial location overlooking the harbor – and that the place where you are sleeping is within sight of the place where I eternally rest. Perhaps your heart heard me calling to you.

The storms over the years may have washed some of my bones into the ocean already – but that’s just a secondary burial at sea. I’m still here. I am still alive.

Then you heard me and turned around. My body was buried in that expansive open field by the sea.

I know you’ve always loved and sought the sea.

Yellow and white flowers grow untended today in a beautiful, glorious cascade of color waving in the wind.

I saw you hold up your hand with your mother’s ring – the one with the tiny diamond passed to her through the generations from her Acadian line.

You brought her, my 6^th great-granddaughter with you.

She and I, we are proud of you, Daughter.

I know there will be no one to follow, but I’m as joyful as a spirit can be. The mist of rain from time to time are my tears of joy reaching you. Look up so I can bless you.

You remained in the baking sun a long time. I mustered a breeze for you. I could see how hot and miserable you were, and those pesky bees – but you seem to have forgotten about all that. I didn’t, and tried to protect you.

All you felt was pure joy – a braided cord uniting the generations and our hearts. Connecting us forever.

I saw you bury something in the soil to leave with me. A part of you. What was it?

After a very long time and many tears, shed on the literal end of the earth as it reaches back to France, you turned and walked slowly away – for both the first and the last time.

You have come full circle.

You stopped and looked back. One last time.

One last goodbye – at least for now.

No one else has ever come. Not one else is likely to ever come again. There are no more generations. You are the last in your line.

But I’m satisfied now and resting easy, my daughter.

I am proud of you.

I did not live in vain, as I begat your mother who begat you.

I did not die in vain, as you found and came to honor me.

It is not time for you to join me.

You have words yet to scribe on your pages. Perhaps my story to tell.

Discoveries yet to make before your pages turn more slowly, and then, not at all.

The gentle breezes will turn the final pages, but there is no end – just as there was no beginning of my love for you.

I will reach out my hand and greet you when all of your pages have turned.

I walk with you.

Forever.

_____________________________________________________________

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