The
Duc d'Anville expedition
(June ? October 1746) was sent from France to recapture
Louisbourg
and take peninsular
Acadia
(present-day mainland
Nova Scotia
). The expedition was the largest military force ever to set sail for the New World prior to the
American Revolutionary War
.
[1]
This effort was the fourth and final French attempt to regain the Nova Scotian capital,
Annapolis Royal
, during
King George's War
. The Expedition was also supported on land by a force from
Quebec
under the command of
Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Roch de Ramezay
. Along with recapturing Acadia from the British,
d'Anville
was ordered to "consign Boston to flames, ravage New England and waste the British West Indies." News of the expedition spread fear throughout New York and
New England
.
The expedition was a complete failure. It was beset by bad weather and took three months to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Many in the ships' crews and the troops being transported fell ill before the expedition finally reached Chebucto Bay (present-day
Halifax Harbour
), and d'Anville died not long after its arrival. His successors in command attempted to mount an assault on Annapolis Royal, but eventually gave up and returned to France.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
immortalized the expedition with his poem
A Ballad of the French Fleet.
[2]
Historic context
[
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]
The British had captured the capital of
Acadia
in the
siege of Port Royal (1710)
and renamed it
Annapolis Royal
. Over the next fifty years, the French and their allies made six unsuccessful military attempts to regain the city. The Duc d'Anville expedition, which was coordinated with Ramezay's expedition from Quebec, was the last French attempt to retake the capital of Acadia.
King Louis XV
sent it during
King George's War
, following the stinging French defeat at the
siege of Louisbourg (1745)
.
Preparation
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The expedition included 11,000 men and a fleet of 64 ships.
[3]
The expedition was led by French Admiral
Jean-Baptiste Louis Frederic de La Rochefoucauld de Roye
, Duc d'Anville. The commissary general in charge of supplies was
Francois Bigot
. The fitting-out of this fleet was slow and difficult, and it did not set sail from
Ile-d'Aix
, France until 22 June 1746. A subsequent storm in the
Bay of Biscay
and adverse winds slowed the transatlantic crossing. Disease broke out on the ships ?
typhus
and
scurvy
.
The fleet ran into a long, dead calm off the
Azores
. This ended in a storm, during which several vessels were struck by lightning, which, in one case, caused a
magazine
explosion that killed and wounded over thirty men. By 24 August, the expedition had been at sea for over two months but was still 300
leagues
(1,400 km) from Nova Scotia.
[4]
On 10 September, lead elements of the expedition had arrived at
Sable Island
. Three days later the vessels were scattered by a violent gale that seriously damaged some ships, which were consequently forced to return to France.
[4]
One of the damaged vessels was
Le Mars
(pictured above). She was heavily damaged and taking on water in the storm off Sable Island and decided to return to France with
Le Raphael
. Several weeks later another gale hit, damaging
Le Mars
further and separating her from
Le Raphael
. Twenty leagues (97 km) off Ireland
HMS
Nottingham
severely damaged
Le Mars
in an attack and took her as a prize in October 1746.
[5]
She was added to the British Navy as HMS
Mars
(during the
French and Indian War
, this ship sank in Halifax Harbour in June 1755 after hitting a rock ? known to this day as "Mars Rock".)
[6]
An expedition under the command of
Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Roch de Ramezay
was sent from Quebec to work with d'Anville's expedition. French priest
Jean-Louis Le Loutre
was to coordinate the two expeditions. (French priest
Pierre Maillard
, returning from France, sailed with the expedition.) De Ramezay's force arrived in Nova Scotia in July 1746. He had 700 soldiers and 21 officers. He made camp at
Beaubassin
, where he was met by 300
Abenaki
from
St. John River
and about 300
Mi'kmaq
from Nova Scotia. The total French-Indian force numbered close to 1,300 men.
De Ramezay's soldiers spent the summer and early fall at
Chignecto
and
Minas
waiting for the arrival of the long overdue D'Anville expedition.
(During this time period, de Ramezay sent troops to British-occupied
Port-La-Joye
on present-day
Prince Edward Island
. In
a fierce battle
, de Ramezay's men killed 34 British troops and imprisoned the rest.)
[8]
Nova Scotia
[
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The d'Anville expedition finally reached Nova Scotia in late September, after enduring a three-month voyage. Hundreds of sailors and soldiers had died and hundreds more were gravely ill, suffering from disease. Forty-four vessels anchored in Chebucto (present day
Halifax, Nova Scotia
), where the expedition would spend the next five weeks.
The sick were brought ashore near Birch Cove in the harbour's Bedford Basin. Some recovered from scurvy with the arrival of fresh supplies brought by the Acadians from Grand Pre and Pisiquid, but typhus and typhoid continued to ravage the men.
Within six days of his arrival, on 27 September, d'Anville died after suffering a stroke.
(He was buried on
Georges Island
in what is now Halifax Harbour. His remains stayed there for three years before being taken to
Louisbourg
in September 1749 during the establishment of Halifax.)
On 29 September a council of war led by d'Anville's replacement, Constantin-Louis d'Estourmel, decided to send 1,500 men from the expedition and 300 from the Ramezay expedition to attack Annapolis Royal. D'Estourmel became overwhelmed and discouraged and quickly resigned after a suicide attempt.
The next to assume control of the expedition was the Governor General designate of New France and passenger with the fleet
Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel de la Jonquiere, Marquis de la Jonquiere
. The plan to attack the capital Annapolis Royal intensified, even while men continued to die of disease. By mid-October, 41 percent of the men who reached Chebucto with the fleet were dead or seriously ill ? 2,861 petty officers, seamen and soldiers. The contagion spread to the Mi'kmaq and de Ramezay's men.
[10]
By mid-October 300 of de Ramezay's troops arrived at Annapolis Royal. The French and Indian fighters spent 21 days camped in the Annapolis area waiting for the French ships to arrive with troops and siege artillery. They cut off British land communications with Minas and attempted to stop all contact between the fort and the Acadians.
On 24 October, 42 vessels left Chebucto, with almost 50 Acadian pilots from Minas. Three hospital ships set sail for France with the most critically ill. Thirteen of the ships carried 94 officers and 1,410 soldiers to conduct the siege. Two days later, as the fleet was off
Cape Negro, Nova Scotia
La Jonquiere changed his mind. He ordered his ships back to France and dispatched orders to Annapolis Royal for de Ramezay to withdraw.
Aftermath
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In response to the threat posed by the French expeditions,
Massachusetts Bay
Governor
William Shirley
sent Colonel
Arthur Noble
and hundreds of New England soldiers to secure control over Acadia and drive de Ramezay out. One of the most startling successes of de Ramezay's campaign was
Nicolas Antoine II Coulon de Villiers
' defeat of Colonel Noble at the
Battle of Grand Pre
(1747). De Villiers attacked and defeated a superior force of Noble's militia who were billeted in houses in the Acadian settlement of
Grand-Pre
, in the
Minas Basin
at the top of the
Bay of Fundy
.
The failure of the French expedition had serious implications for Acadian participation in the rest of the war. Any confidence that Acadians may have had that France would be victorious was shaken. After the expedition, Nova Scotia Governor
Paul Mascarene
told Acadians to avoid all "deluding Hopes of Returning under the Dominion of France."
[13]
One French officer noted that when de Ramezay was withdrawing from Annapolis Royal, the Acadians were alarmed and disappointed, feeling they were being abandoned by the mainland French authorities.
The disease from the French crews spread among the Mi'kmaq, killing hundreds of them.
[6]
The last major engagement in the area of Annapolis Royal was during the
French and Indian War
in the
Battle of Bloody Creek (1757)
.
Legacy
[
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See also
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]
References
[
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]
- Footnotes
- ^
Pritchard (1995)
, p. 11
- ^
"A Ballad of the French Fleet"
.
The Atlantic
. April 1877.
- ^
Pritchard (1995)
, pp. 232?233
- ^
a
b
Grenier (2008)
, p. 130
- ^
Pritchard (1995)
- ^
a
b
https://archive.today/20120710105704/http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mma/wrecks/wrecks/shipwrecks.asp?ID=3186
;
Murdoch, Beamish
(1866).
A History of Nova-Scotia, Or Acadie
. Vol. II. Halifax: J. Barnes. p.
277
.
- ^
MacLeod, Malcolm (1979).
"Legardeur de Croisille et de Montesson, Joseph-Michel"
. In Halpenny, Francess G (ed.).
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
. Vol. IV (1771?1800) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
- ^
Dunn (2004)
, p. 163;
Grenier (2008)
, p. 131
- ^
Grenier (2008)
, p. 133
- ^
"Home"
.
ddv.hrce.ca
.
- ^
D'Anville's Encampment National Historic Site of Canada
.
Canadian Register of Historic Places
. Retrieved 30 September 2012.
- Bibliography
External links
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]