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PRELIMINARY REPORT ON DAUPHIN BASTION

BY

BERNARD POTHIER

September 9, 1964

(Fortress of Louisbourg Report H B 8)

NOTE:
Presently, the bibliography is not included here.
For these, please consult the original report in the archives of the Fortress of Louisbourg

PARAGRAPH L:

THE SECOND OCCUPATION, THE DEMOLITION, AND SUBSEQUENT OCCUPATION, 1758 - PRESENT

We know something of the Louisbourg which offered itself to the conqueror in 1758 thanks to the "Report on the condition of the works ..." which the same Bastide from 1745 completed on 13 August 1758 (C.0. 5 / 53 / 365-390).

At the tenaille of the gate, the faces had been quite battered from the guns on the Martissans. The main breach of course had been opened in the left face of the tenaille near the flanked angle. This: face was beaten down almost to the ditch. On the right face, though less seriously battered, the masonry cheeks of the gateway were nevertheless "much shaken".

The left face of the bastion, which during the first occupation the English had covered with a revêtement of planks, had remained because of this precaution in "pretty good condition". Though a small breach had occurred here, Bastide stated that the wall was merely "broke in a few places ... and easily repaired". The parapet of the face, on the other handy was in need of repairs "all bad in some places, much shaken and the mortar dropt out of the whole".

At the left flank it would seem the épaulement, built to cover the rear of this unit from the guns on the Martissans, had indeed been a wise and fruitful exercise. "In much the same condition as before the siege, thought Bastide observed, it had been "battered a little in reverse". The escarp was broken in one or two places and the engineer concluded that, save for the parapet - "partly in ruins and the rest bad, the cheeks of four embrasures all shaken" - the flank remained generally in pretty good condition.

The cavalier - from its origin, a creation of Bastide - was recognized as "in ruins from top to bottom .. it cannot be repaired".

The éperon, at least its West face of earth and masonry, had suffered heavy fire during the siege. It was "battered and blown to ruins". On the other hand, the east face, facing the quay, had been just a little battered, and "in tolerable repair".

The escarp of the curtain was "fallen and mouldered". Two feet of its depth of masonry had fallen to the ditch throughout the whole length. and in some places from top to bottom.

The parapet of the curtain was also "in many places shaken and the mortar dropt". Besides it wasn't very thick, though no figure is given. The traverse near the embrasures and the "tambour" built for the siege had suffered considerable damage. The two embrasures had timber cheeks, and these were bound with iron straps, but the whole was in rains.

In the ditch the works built to protect access to the rounded place of arms from the postern at the re-entrant angle of the King's bastion were, according to Bastide, almost demolished".

Bastide's report considered the repairs he urged were important, and suggested the most effective way of effecting same. In July the most pressing work was to haul down the West gate and clear it of the debris and masonry reinforcement which the French had laid against it, before undertaking its reconstruction.

This was done, and then the ditch was bridged anew. In August there is mention of "facing the batteries of the Dauphin bastion", which probably related more specifically to the parapets,, By mid-September 1758 the pilasters of the new gate were finished as well as all its stone work (1758, John Montresor Journal, Massachusetts Historical Society). In October we learn that the "great magasine" was being shingled (1758, Knap diary, Massachusetts Historical Society). This is probably the one in the gorge of the Dauphin baston, since during the siege it appeared not to have suffered any serious damage.

This is all we have encountered on work of repair at our area.. Furthermore it is quite likely that no more was undertaken as on 23 April 1760 Amherst, the Commander-in-chief in North America, wrote Governor Whitmore in Louisbourg (W.0. 34 / 17 / 192-193) of Secretary Pitt's decision to demolish the fortress of Louisbourg entirely. On 24 May a company of 100 miners arrived at Louisbourg, and on 2 June work on overthrowing the outworks began (10 June 1760, Whitmore to Amherst, W. 0. 34 / 17 / 77-79). On 4 June the miners set to undermining the walls ("Jonathan Darling Junior's Journal" Bangor Historical Magazine, vol. 11, 76-78, October 1886).

The task of blowing up the walls was terminated on 8 November 1760 (idem.) The following day Bastide, the new Engineer in chief in North America, wrote of the event to Amherst (W. 0. 34 / 14 / 11-12). Evidently, everything had sprung according to the fondest optation of all concerned. 

Mr. Wayne E. Foster's draft report to Mr. Bickerton furnished virtually all the inspiration for the study of the occupation of the Dauphin bastion area subsequent to the demolition of 1760. My purpose in using this report was to help determine what houses and other structures have stood in the area of the Dauphin bastion and curtain since 1760.

The first mention of habitation in the area was in 1774. Between the West gate and the barrachois, land was occupied by Lawrence Kavanagh Sr., "the Kennedies and two more of the inhabitants." (11 July 1774, PAC / Dartmouth Mss. / v. 1, part 1 / no. 995). It. is noteworthy that succeeding generations of Kennedies retained a hold on their land near the Dauphin gate until 1929 when the Dominion government terminated expropriation for the creation of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Park.

In 1795 there is mention of the land beginning at a stake near the West gate as being occupied by one Matthew Kehoe (28 April 1921, Dept. of Justice Abstract / National Parks / F. Lo. 2, no. 1 p. 2, and 112), but there is nothing further to indicate that this parcel touched upon the area of the Dauphin bastion and curtain indication that the Kennedy property was located on both sides of our front would preclude our interest in the Kehoe lot (next paragraph).

The Kennedy lot (occupied jointly in 1795 by Pierce Kennedy Sr., Pierce Kennedy Jr., and John Burke) was situated near the Dauphin gate, and straddled both sides of the former ramparts of the bastion and curtain, though the greater portion lay outside the "town" (Ibid.) Near the turn of the 18th century, the three licensees agreed to a division of their land among themselves. The Kennedies, Sr. and Jr., fenced their portion and built a house and barn (Ibid.) in the north west corner of the city. During his 1815 visit to Louisbourg, bishop Plessis of Quebec lived with the Kennedies and called their homes "one of the most respectable homes in which a priest can stay and set up his altar" (Quoted in A. A. Johnston, Catholic Church in Eastern N.S.,291).

In 1825 however, a visiting priest wrote that there remained in Louisbourg "only two poultry houses" (Idem., p. 489). This in turn is confirmed seven years later by a writer who described the old fortress site as "now without an inhabitant, ... utterly deserted" (Joseph Bouchette, The British Dominions in North America, London, 1832, vol. II, p. 78). A traveller coming to Louisbourg in the early 1830's found but "a few huts, the habitations of poor unambitious fishermen" (J. McGregor, British America, 1832, p. 389)

In the late 1840's Abraham Gesner remarked that the ancient city was occupied by a "half dozen fishermen and their families". In 1868, their habitations were described as "a few hovels". In his report Mr. Foster assumes that Kennedies and Powers inhabited the Old Town in 1870. The latter had
allied themselves to the Kennedies a century previously when Ellen married Richard Power.

Pascal Poirier noted in 1876 that "2 or 3 maisons d'assez misérable apparance" stood in the old fortress area (Pascal Poirier, "Louisbourg en 1902" Royal Society of Canada Proceedings and Transactions, vol. 111, section 1, 1902, p. 115 sq.). The plan 1897-1 shows five buildings at the former Dauphin bastion and one near the curtain.

Parkman wrote in 1900 of "two small farm houses" (F. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, Toronto, 1900, v. 2. p. 258).

By 1922, when the Dominion government was working on the problem of expropriation, nine buildings were shown to be near the the Dauphin bastion area (1922, Plan of  Louisbourg, Provincial land
surveyor), some of which may possibly have been dwellings.

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